I 




Man and his World; 



ONENESS OF NOW AND ETERNITY. 



A SERIES OF 



IMAGINARY DISCOURSES BETWEEN 
SOCRATES AND PROTAGORAS. 



By/ 
JOHN DARBY, 

AUTHOR OF " ODD HOURS OF A PHYSICIAN," " NINETEENTH CENTURY 
SENSE," ETC. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
1889. 



Gt a3 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



Copyright, 1889, by J. B. Lippincott Company. 



<^mk0^ 



7 



DEDICATION 



TO " CEBES," 

who may stand as representative of students generally, and par- 
ticularly of nine hundred young men constituting at this time the 
membership of the Garretsonian Society, to whom the present volume 
is addressed as being illustrative of lectures delivered before the resi- 
dent members in the winter of 1888-89 > earnest examiners as to cor- 
respondence in things, most of them ; sceptical as to matters in 
general, many of them ; believing nothing, some of them, — this book 
is earnestly, and with due sense of responsibility, dedicated, in confi- 
dence that not only will it recall interesting hours spent together in 
the class-room and the amphitheatre, but as well it will serve as reply 
to questions that must continue to offer themselves for examination. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Twenty years ago, when the writer was wholly a 
Platonist, he wrote, and a few years later published, 
the first one hundred and six pages of the present 
volume, under the title "Two Thousand Years After." 
That brochure was received by the press with a 
warmth that rendered the commendations a source 
of gratification to both publisher and author, and 
was the means of a quick and very satisfactory cir- 
culation of the work. In presenting the present 
addenda, which make the book of so entirely dif- 
ferent a character and meaning as to require other 
naming, the author trusts he will not be viewed as 
exceeding the bounds of a becoming modesty in 
suggesting that attempt is made, through an exhibit 
of the principles of things, to bring something of 
harmony out of the prevalent confusion of the times, 
and to reconcile the childish, yet destructive, differ- 
ences that separate people of the various sects and 
systems. 

Light is according to eyes and opportunity. To 
prepare the volume as it here stands, its writer left 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

disturbing influences, as these associate with the life 
of a busy city doctor, and lived for three months 
among the quiet retreats and " contemplative shades" 
that exist so abundantly about the locality of Swarth- 
more College : God, and nature, are never seen by 
him as closely in the town as in the country, nor 
does he find it as easy to see principles through brick 
walls as through arboring trees. The three months 
spent in thinking and writing the addenda were to 
him days of serene and unalloyed happiness. Re- 
lationship with Socrates, Protagoras, Cebes, and the 
others of the pages was much more real than was 
the presence of the people of the village. 

The writer is compelled here to risk arousing preju- 
dice on the part of the critics in suggesting the mean- 
ing of the present book to be lines between lines to his 
lately published work, " Nineteenth Century Sense," a 
book, this last named, which certainly did not please 
them, a matter not to be wondered at, perhaps, as 
impulses of the heart and psychical inferences domi- 
nate it rather than ordinary literary refinements in 
the manner of its arrangement. It is certainly not 
a book in accord with the hard practical sense of 
the times. Perception must accord, however, with 
state of mind. The author, for himself, has to con- 
fess that there are times in which the pages are as 
dead paper to him, while at other times, on the con- 



INTRODUCTION. Vll 

trary, something or other in the work illumines and 
vivifies him. 

Considering the invariable kindness of the book re- 
viewers as manifested towards all his writings with 
exception of the volume just named, the author asks 
them to re-read it in the light of the present dis- 
courses, and he asks for this reading when a sick 
hour or other favoring circumstances shall have shut 
out the confusing sounds of the great hurly-burly. 

To his students he would recommend the reading 
of his books in the order in which they most naturally 
relate: first, " Odd Hours of a Physician;" second, 
"Hours with John Darby;" third, " Brushland ;" 
fourth, "Thinkers and Thinking;" fifth, "Man and 
his World;" and sixth, "Nineteenth Century Sense." 
If such a course be pursued, no single volume of the 
series will be found lacking in clearness; the phi- 
losophy and views of life as inculcated and set forth 
will, after such manner of reading, show in their 
proper light and position, and may then be rejected 
or accepted as the reader shall decide. 

The frontispiece is a contribution to the members 
of the society named in the dedication, insisted on 
by the author's too partial and kind publishers. 



CONTENTS. 

PART I. 

GENERAL ARGUMENT. 

PAGE 

The Queries of Cebes concerning the Soul 14 

Transmigration : a Text from Ovid 15 

The Ionian Judgment 20 

Reflections in a Cemetery 24 

Inquiries concerning the Soul 27 

Protagoras and Things 31 

A Definition of Things 32 

Men and Brutes 33 

The Quality of Apprehension 39 

Real Things and Images 42 

The Cartesian System 43 

Nothing Wrong in Itself 47 

Idealism 52 

The Creating of Things 54 

THE SOUL. 

Seven Senses ' . . 59 

Offices of the Senses 60 

God and Soul one 61 

Immortality 64 

WHO AND WHAT IS MAN? 

The Entities 72 

Spinoza ' 72 

Locke's Definition of Soul . 74 

ix 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Leibnitz's Definition of Mind 74 

Defects of the above Definitions 74 

A Watch and Intelligence . 75 

Soul not a Necessary Part of Man 76 

Mind and a Shadow 78 

Thought a Function 78 

Matter 80 

Force 81 

Hegelianism 82 

The Becoming and Departing 83 

Relation of Man with Brutes and Vegetables 86 

Mind 89 

Genius 91 

Suffering by Negation 98 

God and Men 98 

The Writing on a Tombstone 106 



PART II. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ETERNAL NOW. 

Codicil 109 

Quotation from " Religio Medici" ill 

Introductory 113 

Protagoras introduced 115 

The All of Now 116 

To-Day's Standing-Place 118 

Force 121 

The Elemental 121 

Soul 126 

Eternity and Now one 129 

Body of Man 132 

Babies without either Mind or Soul 137 



CONTENTS. XI 



I. 

PAGE 

Consciousness identical with I 143 

Jean Paul Richter and his I 143 

What it is that perceives 144 

What it is that becomes Cold or Hungry 144 

Differentiation of the I 144 

Educated Sense not the Source of Complete Enlightenment . 145 

Means required to see around a Circle 146 

The Uses of God Sense, Egoistic Sense, Educated Sense, and 

Common Sense 146 

A Paradigm relating to Materialization 147 

Man without Concern to know Unknowable Things .... 151 

Caterpillars and Men equally Immortal 152 

Where Man comes from 150 

Self- Abnegation the Attainment of Invulnerability .... 155 

A Pure Inspiration 155 



KNOWLEDGE OF SELF AND RELATION WITH THE 
UNIVERSAL. 

The Individuality called Man 157 

The Beginning of Knowledge . . . 157 

The Hypostases of Man 157 

The Entities 157 

Three Things constituting the Universal 160 

Oneness yet Separability of God, Ego, and Matter .... 161 

Tripartite Man 165 

Many yet only One 163 

Self not less Self by reason of Lack of Body or of Soul . . 163 

Emptiness not a Vacuum 163 

The Body occupied in the Dream State 164 

Astral Body 164 

Duty one with Performance of Function 165 

Knowledge of Self one with Knowledge of the Universal . 167 

Realists and Idealists 168 



Xll CONTENTS. 



FROM COMPLEXITY TO SIMPLICITY. 

PAGE 

Intention of Philosophy to afford Purpose to Life 171 

Understanding of Object 172 

A Paradigm relating Oneness with the Many 172 

Only Two Systems of Philosophy 177 

Realism and Idealism 1 77 

Judgment and Common Sense 178 

Inexperience one with Dogmatism 179 

Realism and Nominalism 180 

Idealism one with Perception 183 

Objectivism 185 

Subjectivism 187 

Materialism 188 

Spiritualism 189 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 

Concerning the Philosophers 191 

Who and What is Man ? 191 

Outside seen before Inside 191 

Common-Sense Perception 191 

The Philosophy of Greece, India, and Egypt 192 

The Start of Ontology 193 

The Greek Intellectual Age 194 

Mencius, Gautama, and Moses 195 

Spinoza's Utterances on Origin 196 

Confusion everywhere save with the Hypostases ...... 197 

The Interval between Thales and Epicurus 19S 

Views of Zeno of Elea 199 

Conclusions of Democritus 199 

Greek and Indian Thinking 201 

Diogenes and Evidence of Design 201 

Intellectual Advance in Men 203 

A Backwoodsman antipodal to a Fakir 204 

Neo-Platonism 205 



CONTENTS. Xlil 

PAGS 

The Modern Spiritist 206 

Proclus and Faith 206 

Mysticism of the Alexandrians 207 



FROM CIRCUMFERENCE TO CENTRE. 

A Hoop the Symbol of Life and Living 209 

The Unseen and the Seen 210 

A Look at Foundation 212 

An Eternal Now 213 

Sin as existing with Matter 219 

The Moons of Jupiter and the Legs of a Mite 220 

Religion and the Hypostases 221 

A Watch as Reminder of the Reiigious State 222 

Karma and Kismet 222 

Soul and Religion identical 224 

Man one with Beast in Absence of Soul 224 

The Doctrine of Special Providence 224 

Providence never farther away than is a Man's Self from 
himself, or than are away the Neighbors who sur- 
round him 228 



FROM CENTRE TOWARDS CIRCUMFERENCE. 

Who is Rosicrucian 231 

Circumference as related with Hypostases 232 

Bankers and Brokers and Candlestick-Makers 232 

Tariffs 233 

Commutation of Per Cent, into Capital 233 

Race Discriminations 233 

Selfishness neither in God nor in Matter 235 

Common Good the only Good 237 

Alchemists, Immortals, and Illuminati 241 

The Pineal Gland as the Seat of the Ego 243 

A Rosicrucian the Wisest and Richest of Men 244 

Sight of Things through Different Media 245 



XIV CONTENTS. 



TOWARDS THE SUBJECTIVE. 

PAGE 

The Altering of a Human Face 247 

Looking through Clouds 248 

Subjective one with Association of Ego and Imagination . 248 

Iron Posts and Essence Posts 249 

The Image in the Log 250 

Things parted from yet kept 25 1 

Seneca and Riches 253 

Alp Mountains not Realities 253 

The Ordinary Concerns of Men little different from Puff- 
Balls 255 

Approach of Material, Departure of Spiritual 256 

The Mystery of Nirvana 258 



TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER. 



ARGUMENT. 



NEARLY twenty-three hundred years ago, Socrates, whose name is 
familiar to all thinkers, was executed at Athens, having been con- 
demned by the judges because of accusations preferred by one Melitus 
that he disbelieved in the gods of his country, and through his teach- 
ings corrupted the Athenian youth. On the day in which the sentence 
was to be carried into effect, there were assembled in the prison his 
friends Echecrates, Pheedo, Apollodorus, Cebes, Simmias, and Crito, 
and with these Plato represents as being held the world-famous con- 
versation on the immortality of the soul. 

In the present dialogue, it has not been thought either amiss or 
out of keeping with nature's laws to imagine that, in the correlations 
or transmigrations of life, these friends should find themselves again 
together after the lapse of all these years, and that, possessed of the 
lore of the modern Positivist, the conversation should be renewed. 

In the original argument, as given in the Phasdo, Socrates did not 
succeed in satisfying fully either himself or his hearers as to the nature 
and meaning of the Soul. The explanation of this is that he started, 
and continued to the end, with a confusion existing in the confound- 
ing, yet at the same time an indistinct mingling, of entirely separate 
and distinct things. He was strictly right, as is accepted in the present 
volume, as to his main conception of Soul, as such conception is 
gotten out of analysis and comparison of the Phaedo, Phaedrus, and 
Republic, but he was wholly wrong in esteeming Soul to be identical 
with the Thing by which man has his immortality. Duality, as taught 
by Socrates, is the confusion as well of to-day as it was of two thou- 
sand years ago. The first part of this book makes but little departure 
from the original Socratic premise ; its subject at large is Soul ; its 
design to make plain that lack of soul is want of difference between 
man and brute. The second part passes to a philosophy founded on 
recognition of distinction between Soul and Ego and of the oneness 
of Now and Eternity. In this part the author expresses his own 
philosophy and religion. 



TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER. 



Socrates. It is permitted me, O Cebes, to continue 
with you that conversation which the good intention 
of Crito would have altogether prevented, had we not 
denied the importunities of him who prepared the 
poison-cup. 

Cebes. Nothing strange does it seem to hear again 
the voice. 

Soc. Nothing strange; for that which is heard is 
immortal; instruction resides not less on the lips of 
folly than in the speech of wisdom, and he who hears 
not the voice always, hears not only because that he 
does not listen. But heed, Cebes, and call you Phsedo, 
and Echerates, Apollodorus, Simmias, and Crito ; shall 
we not with profit take up the subject of our discourse 
at that point where the commands of the officer of the 
Eleven interrupted it? 

2 13 

1 



14 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Ceb. Whether the voice be false or true, whether it 
bears the speech of Cynosarges or deceives through the 
lips of a sophist, I will listen, hoping to find doubts 
resolved. 

Soc. Judge of a speech, Cebes, by the argument. 
This, then, is the sum of what you inquired, when, in 
the pen at Athens, we sat together two thousand years 
ago. You required it to be proved that man has a 
soul ; that soul is something imperishable and immor- 
tal; that a philosopher who is about to die, full of 
confidence and hope that after death he shall be far 
happier than if he had died after leading a different 
kind of life, does not entertain such confidence foolishly 
and vainly. You asserted, as well, that even to be able 
to show that a soul is something having existence, and 
that it is of a strong and divine nature, and that it lived 
before we men were born, not at all hinders, but that 
all such things may evince, not its immortality, but 
that the soul is durable, and existed an immense space 
of time before, and knew and did many things ; but 
that, for all this, it was not at all the more immortal ; 
but that its entrance into the body of a man is the 
beginning of its destruction, as though it were a disease, 
so that it passes through this life in wretchedness, and 
at last perishes in what is called death. You declared, 
also, that it is of no consequence whether it should 
come into a body once or often with respect to out 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 1 5 

occasion of fear, for it is right, you said, that he should 
be afraid, unless he be foolish, who does not know, and 
cannot give a reason to prove that the soul is immortal. 
Such is, I think, Cebes, the sum of what you required, 
and what you asserted. 

Ceb. I do not take from, or add to it ; such things I 
said. 

Soc. Now that the centuries which have come and 
gone, have left behind demonstrations of which the 
sophists knew nothing, and of which we in our turn had 
as little provision — now, holding speech again together, 
we are able to affirm of things whereof formerly we 
ventured alone to insinuate. Give heed, Cebes ; to-day 
we shall have a demonstration which in itself carries its 
own voucher ; to-day we shall be made to feel that we 
know whereof we affirm. The centuries, my Cebes, 
are as vantage ground. What Thesetetus lacked as to 
the meaning of science is now fully comprehended, for 
the times have exhibited not only this meaning, but as 
well the end of such manner of inquiry. Let us, then, 
talk together from the standpoint of to-day, for after 
such manner it is that we have to the advantage of our 
discourse, that fresher knowledge to which I allude. 

Ceb. After whatsoever manner it best pleases you. 

Soc. We will have then, as a text, those lines which 
the poet Ovid makes as speech for Pythagoras. 



1 6 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

« Death has no power the immortal soul to slay ; 
That, when its present body turns to clay, 
Seeks a fresh home, and with unminished might 
Inspires another frame with life and light. 
So I myself (well I the past recall), 
When the fierce Greeks begirt Troy's holy wall 
Was brave Euphorbus ; and in conflict drear, 
Poured forth my blood beneath Atrides' spear ; 
The shield this arm did bear, I lately saw 
In Juno's shrine, a trophy of that war." 

Heed, Crito, when all was over, as you would have 
it, did you catch and bury Socrates ? * You remember, 
my friends, that I craved you as sureties to Crito, whom 
I could not persuade that the body he was to bury was 
not Socrates, even though I argued long both for his and 
my own consolation. When I shall tell you what I 
now know, it will not seem a strange thing to learn that 
Socrates was a mourner with you at his own funeral. 
There was a something also that I held with Simmias. 

* After the conclusion of his discourse, Socrates proposed to 
bathe himself in order that such trouble might be spared those 
who were to prepare his body for interment. Crito, anxious to 
pay every respect to the master, asks Socrates if he has any com- 
mands to give, and among other things begs to know how he 
would like to be buried. Smiling, the sage replies, " Just as you 
please, provided you can catch me," and he then begs the others 
to be sureties to Crito for his absence from the body, as before, Crito 
had been bound to the judges for his appearance on the day of 
trial. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 1 7 

If I am not wrong, Simmias, we did agree, after some 
argument, that death consisted alone in a separation of 
soul from the materials of the body ; that the wisdom 
of the philosopher counselled him to keep the soul 
always as isolated from the mortal parts as possible, in 
order that he should secure to himself the greatest 
pleasure : this, we inferred ; now are we prepared to 
understand that which before we could not prove. 

Simmias. It is well recalled, Socrates. It was myself 
who admitted that there exist two classes of pleasures, 
namely, such as come of agreeable bodily sensations, 
and others with which bodily parts seem to have no 
association. Also, it was agreed to, that pure knowl- 
edge might only come when the soul denied all office 
of reason on the part of the body. It was, as well, 
agreed that purification consists in this, namely, in ac- 
customing the soul to collect itself by itself, on all sides, 
apart from the body, and to dwell, so far as it can, in 
a present and in a future, alone by itself, delivered, as 
it were, from the shackles of the body. 

Soc. If I mistake not, Simmias, it was an inference 
that a wise man could have no fear of death ; on the 
contrary, that it was the part of philosophy to court a 
dissolution of the mortal ties, seeing that only in such 
a dissolution could the soul obtain its freedom. 

Ceb. It is not to be forgotten, Socrates, that, dissatis- 
fied with this conclusion, it was even I who suggested 

2* B 



1 8 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

that there might be no soul apart from body — that the 
day in which a body dies, soul is dispersed and vanishes 
like breath or smoke. 

Soc. You say right, Cebes ; the memory of the objec- 
tion has not left me ; and now, with clearer vision, are 
we to take up the arguments where, together, we laid 
them down. Heed, my friend; we will get knowl- 
edge of the soul in learning what it is not. The cen- 
tury that marks our present meeting having in it a 
fulness of positive research, such as was not found with 
our master Anaxagoras, or with any that preceded him, 
we find ourselves as men standing upon high ground ; 
around us, and within us, is that which shows, with an 
irrefutable plainness, as it would seem, what are the 
meaning and end of scientific inquiry; a knowledge 
which we are led to perceive had first to be arrived at 
in order to the possibility of recognizing anything that 
might have existence beyond the material. 

Ceb. Shall we not begin with the beginning, Soc- 
rates ? 

Soc. It is well put, Cebes, seeing that they listen who 
were not before auditors. We recall to ourselves, and 
to these other, that, previous to the school of the Ionian 
philosophers, — of which Thales was the founder, — man 
had not attempted any inquiry into himself or into the 
manner or matter of his composition ; the world was ac- 
cepted by him as he found it, and, like unto a tree or 



OR A TALK IN A CE METER Y. 1 9 

rock, he rested in that in which he found nutrition and 
development. 

But to Thales came the inclination leading to inquiry, 
" Who and what is Thales? ' ' This, we remember, was the 
question ever present with the sage. But Thales could 
find on the earth, or in the universe, nothing which 
seemed to him so potent and so omnipresent as moist- 
ure. Water, he declared, therefore, — and, as it would 
seem, most naturally and plausibly, — to be the one 
component of the world. A man, he said, was made 
up of water, the earth is water, the gods themselves are 
water; and all was well argued and well spoken, for 
according to the light so was the judgment. 

Next we are to refer to Anaximenes, the successor, 
shall we call him, of Thales. The pupil of Anaximander 
did not agree, however, with his predecessor. A some- 
thing more persistent than water he thought Air to be ; 
so in this element, — as he considered it, — he affirmed 
was to be found the one component of man and world 
and God. Wherever life is, there also, said Anaxi- 
menes, is to be found respiration; where no air is, 
there is death. 

Ceb. And Heraclitus denied the conclusions of both 
his Ionian brothers. 

Soc. Well remembered, Cebes ; the Ephesian did in 
truth differ widely from those who went before in their 
conclusions. Fire, he affirmed to be the one component 



20 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

of the world. A spontaneous force and activity resided, 
he said, in fire : Neither by God, nor by man, is God 
or man or world ; all are of an ever-living fire, in due 
measure self-enkindled, and in due measure self-extin- 
guished. Yet see, O Cebes, all the Ionians agreed in 
this, namely, that there existed a universal principle, 
this principle abiding the same, no matter how multi- 
tudinous the changes ; and, indeed, in this lies the gist 
of the Ionian philosophy. 

Sim. We are right, Socrates, in accepting . that the 
error of this school lay in the unreliability of the means 
employed by it to understand ? 

Soc. We are right indeed, Simmias. The Ionians 
recognized no source of knowledge apart from the 
senses of the organic man : what these senses exhibited 
to them they affirmed to be truth. Thus, the Ionian 
philosophy means the judgment that comes of seeing, 
hearing, tasting, smelling, of general and special touch ; 
these being the senses that pertain to man as an animal, 
and being the instruments employed by the school, 
which we consider, to acquire its conclusions. But, 
even in the far-away days, it was not a difficult matter 
for us to perceive the fallacies of Ionian judgments, in- 
asmuch as it was of self-exhibition that truth resided 
not in the judgments of senses simply animal in their 
import j for while it was that a man might very well say 
what any certain thing appeared to him to be, yet very 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 21 

little inquiry elicited that no two men could possibly 
see the same thing in exactly the same manner ; just 
as it is not seen of any two that in physiognomy they 
exactly resemble each other. To the Ionians we are to 
give, however, a credit which justly belongs to them, 
for having opened the epoch of philosophic inquiry 
(all other people rested in some theology or mythology), 
but this award is all that belongs to them. And who, 
Simmias, are we to honor for an advancing step, if not 
Diogenes? for from whom, if not from the Apollonian, 
got the great Anaxagoras that cue which enabled him 
to declare that, while it might very well be that Anax- 
imenes was right in teaching that the world was made 
of air, yet the universe was seen to be full of the ex- 
pressions of arrangement, and that such direction could 
not possibly reside in a simple ? See, said the Greek, 
all that man looks upon is found to be ordered in the 
best and most beautiful manner ; and without Reason 
this would be impossible. It must be, therefore, that 
the air is a compound, and in it resides consciousness. 

Ceb. Neither are we to forget, Socrates, that noble 
" Argument of Design " made by yourself, which to-day 
seems as impressive as when, two thousand years back. 
Xenophon wrote it out for the Athenians. 

Soc. We may let that go, Cebes ; yet no more right- 
fully was I in debt a cock to Esculapius than does the 
philosopher of to-day owe an oblation to the Lydian 



22 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Anaxagoras. We are not to detract from credit due 
Diogenes; but we may not fail to recognize in the 
Lydian the planter of that seed out of which have grown 
the umbrageous branches under which discourse the 
modern peripatetics. All, said Anaxagoras, was chaos 
until intelligence (Mind) entered into matter. Yet 
heed, Cebes, for here we are to make mention of the 
paradox of the citizen of Clazomenae. Agreeing with 
the Ionians, he taught, as you remember, that all knowl- 
edge comes through the senses ; opposing the Ionians, 
and agreeing with Xenophanes, he declared that all 
knowledge received through the senses is delusive. 
Was he right, Cebes, in the first, or in the last, of his 
premises ? Or, of possibility, is the paradox more seem- 
ing than real ? 

Ceb. Why not, Socrates ? 

Soc. It is to be assumed that reason leads not to 
truth ; this, because office is to be denied to reason save 
as such office is an associate of the senses. Reason is 
a thing wholly and strictly influenced by the character 
of brain organization, and it is the case, as has most 
wisely been affirmed by the eleatic Parmenides, that the 
highest degree of thought comes from the highest de- 
gree of brain organization. How, then, should it be 
otherwise than that reason is a false measure, seeing 
that it is a something dependent on the accidents of a 
construction, and not a thing immutable and unchange- 
able in itself? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 2$ 

Ceb. But what is to be the argument, Socrates ? 

Soc. This, Cebes : that reason cannot be a reliable 
staff upon which to lean, seeing that by no possibility 
can this show the same thing in the same manner to 
any two persons. That it is not by means of a man's 
mind that he can come to know himself: yet that there 
exists a means through which a man may as surely 
arrive at such knowledge, as that the almighty God is a 
self-acquainted entity. 

Ceb. To know thus much, Socrates, would seem to 
possess one with the wisdom of life. 

Soc. It was not unlikely so esteemed by the oracle. 
Give heed, Cebes, and you too, Simmias, and Apollo- 
dorus, and all others who would make an excursion. 
It was one of no less repute than our other master, 
Pythagoras, who persisted in declaring that in the 
number One was to be settled the principle of existence. 
Has any one understood the Samian ? Did the mathe- 
matician comprehend himself ? Come, my friends ; it 
is in the arcana of nature, and not amid the marts of 
these busy moderns that to-day we find ourselves. Let 
us, unmindful of aberrant lessons, set ourselves to the 
contemplation of that wherein exists, and out of which 
arises, all instruction. Let us renew our converse con- 
cerning the Soul — for if it be that any among us shall 
find himself assisted to the apprehension of this 
Totality, then in truth must it be that life may con- 



24 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

tain no mysteries, or possess no riddles, the solutions to 
which this favored one shall not find within himself. 
It is a place of quiet and profound peace, this in which 
we find ourselves. A cemetery, people call it ; these 
many stones scattered around cover, they say, dust that 
is dead. Ah ! happy provision of nature that all this 
earth has lost understanding of fevers that preyed on it 
and which consumed it — yet that it is dust for which 
new wings are fledging. But wisdom is not in a grave, 
Cebes, and therefore may not arise out of it. Yet, of all 
seats to be sought by the contemplative, none may 
have preference over that where tombstones are found 
under the willows. Heed, my friends ; here evidently 
is the grave of one who consumed the privileges of 
existence in eating, drinking, and sleeping. Perhaps 
his dog rots with him. Why not ? a dog eats and drinks 
and sleeps, and then rots. — "Was born" — "Died" — 
this is all the history. Here is a monument, a mauso- 
leum made up of many pieces ; perhaps it represents 
well the life of the sleeper — a piece here, and a piece 
there, stolen from the happiness of other people. There 
are blurs in the marble — not fewer, perhaps, than were 
in the life — yet, as marble turns to dust, white and 
black go together — the black spots are fading as well 
from the mold beneath. Nature will again try the 
quarry — hoping for better productions. 

Here lies one, pronounced by his marble, an orator. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETER Y. 2$ 

No memories tell us beyond the name. Has his breath, 
Cebes, gone with the winds, and has not Anaximenes 
his own ? 

This is the grave of one who wrote many books, but 
nothing has been left above ground; it is a grave, 
indeed, Cebes, and so Matter must try in fresh form 
for immortality, — the many verses were lines from the 
mind ; mind is a function of the brain ; a brain is 
dust — no soul moved the fingers of this writer. 

How great, my friends, must have been the wealth 
that reared the pile we now look upon : yet the name 
it bears has no familiar sound. — A life, no doubt, was 
this, which took into itself a multitude of other lives — 
consuming them, not for immortality, but for the 
purposes of nature — correlating, correlating, yet all 
to no end, — and so all these many lives which lie 
beneath the stone have alone the meaning of the mold 
of the trunk of this great cherry-tree, which, in its season, 
produced not, and which, as is fitting, rots not less 
humbly than the man as it lies in the shade of his 
marble. Yet, perhaps, another period shall serve to 
unite the dust of man and tree, and who will deny that 
something may not come of the union? — A cherry, 
perhaps; or, maybe, a man of such stature that the 
God shall find fitting residence in him — who shall 
say? 

What a great multitude of graves, and yet, all name- 
3 



26 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

less, — but this is in the way of nature : a million seeds 
of the thistle-down scattered broadcast ; a million ova 
given to the waters running in from the sea. Which of 
the multitude of seeds shall produce a plant? which 
ovum bring forth a fish ? It is a blessed privilege of 
man, my friends, that he lives not after the manner of 
the chance of thistle-down or fish. The man that 
craves immortality may possess himself of it, and in 
exact proportion with his craving and his longing will 
he share of it ; and when immortality comes to a man, 
then has come, as well, eternity. So it is that in each 
day such a man experiences the fulness of living; 
a day, to such an one, is as a thousand years, and a 
thousand years might not seem different from a day; 
the mortal has become subjective to the immortal, and 
the physical man ceases to have concern or care about 
what are called life and death, for to his consciousness 
has come the knowledge that in these there is no dis- 
tinction. The man whom the God individualizes has lost 
himself in God ; his harmony is in the hand that strikes 
the chords of his organism. Such a man loses con- 
sciousness of himself inexact proportion as the God occu- 
pies him. Is it to be wondered at that such become in- 
different to the body ? Is a God to be ornamented with 
a silken hat and shoe-buckles ? Or is he to be esteemed 
singular in that his ways differ from those of animals? 
And the difference in men lies simply in this, that 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 2J 

some cry diligently to the God that they may be occu- 
pied ; but others deny the God, and will not let them- 
selves be merged into him \ and so, remaining as all 
other purely matter and force composed things, these 
may not, of possibility, find themselves of different 
constitution or signification. To such, death would 
seem to mean just what disintegration means to a 
stone, or what decomposition means to the dog or 
horse. There is here nothing that can retain a sense 
of individuality, and when we bury such from our 
sight we have given their personality to nature. 

Of all inquiries which it concerns men to make, that 
is the most important which considers the soul. 

" Ignoratur enim, quae sit natura animi : 
Nati sit : an, contra, nascentibus insinuetur ; 
Et simul intereat nobiscum morte diremter; 
An tenebras Orci visat, vastaque lacunas, 
An pecudes alias divinitas insinuet se." 

And is the poet right in thus declaring man's igno- 
rance of himself? Whether the soul be born with a 
man, or be infused into him at birth ? Whether it dies 
with the body and with the material returns to earth ? 
Or whether it passes into other animals ? Not right, 
but wrong, is he ; for it does expose itself that a soul 
may be known as is a body, and he who finds himself 



28 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

attuned may turn his eyes inward and apprehend it. 
This did Plotinus and his fellow mystics make plain at 
a period allied with the time when Phsedo conversed 
with us ; for did not the soul of Philo come to a sur- 
face where it was seen of such as might behold it ? 
And has not this same thing been observed, only, how- 
ever, after a different manner, by the wise Lucretius, 
who declares for a nature that is corporeal of the mind ? 

Corpoream naturam animi esse necesse est 
Corporis quoniam telis istique laborat. 

It is not unknown to us, Cebes, neither was it un- 
familiar in the olden time, that philosophy, whether 
theological, positive, or metaphysical, advances only, 
and always, towards a single something, which some- 
thing is felt and recognized to be all things in itself 
— the origin and cause of life — the entity, of which 
images and signs are the expression. And furthermore, 
the learned fail not to understand that while multitu- 
dinous names are applied by the ages to this entity — to 
this abstract something — yet it has ever had, and may 
only continue to have, a common meaning and signifi- 
cation to all. Thus, whether the appellation be ' ' God, ' ' 
as used by ourselves; "One," as it was named by 
Pythagoras; "Mind," as our master Anaxagoras called 
it; or whatever the title employed — as "Idea" by 
our pupil Plato; Ormus, by the Persian; "Brama" 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 2g 

by the Indian ; Zeus, as by the Macedonian : or, to 
come to these modern people, "Idee," as by the Ger- 
man Hegel ; "Substance," as by the wonderful Spinoza 
— no matter what the name, a common thing and prin- 
ciple stands out and forth as the representative, and 
through no argument may this one be resolved into the 
many, except as such many pertain to phenomena. 
Heed, Cebes; if I am wrong as to this conclusion, are 
their none amongst you who will refute me ? Truly are 
we not without learning sufficient to a refutation, if any 
refutation there be. Have we not together studied 
"De Rerum Natura," peering with Lucretius through 
lights and shadows? Have we not with Shungie 
plucked from the orbit, and eaten, the left eye of a 
great chief with hope of increasing the outlook of our 
own ? What has Plutarch told of Osiris and Isis that 
we do not know? And what has Vishnu Purana 
spoken of Brahm that we have not comprehended? 
Have we not heeded the Yasna, drank of the waters of 
the Talmud, and with a "John" searched through the 
mysteries of the Logos ? Notice the great rock, Cebes, 
upon whose broad face we now sit holding discourse ; 
see the sun-illumined stream winding its way amid the 
green things of its shores ; look at the brown ridges in 
the ploughed land out of which just now are rising the 
potato stems ; behold yon clump of deep-tangled briars 
in which the birds are holding high revel. And still 
3* 



30 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

as well, Cebes, let memory carry thy gaze to that water 
on which together we have so often looked from the 
Piraeus ; these things, to me, Cebes, are living beings. 
Is not the soul, said Bharata to Sauriva's king, one, 
uniform, perfect, exempt from birth, omnipresent, un- 
decaying, mode of true knowledge, disassociated with 
unrealities ? Ignorance alone it is which enables Maya 
to impress the mind with sense of individuality ; for as 
soon as that is dispelled, it is known that severalty exists 
not, and that there is nothing but one individual whole. 

Ceb. I, for one, listen not further, if it is designed to 
show that severalty exists not. 

Soc. Foolish Cebes, are we not in ourselves argument 
to the contrary? What everlasting peace, Cebes, seems 
the fixedness of this great stone ; how the potato stems 
seem as if coming forth to a feast of sunshine, and 
which indeed they do ; how glad-voiced are the birds 
in the briar-tangle. I think, as we sit here, Cebes, that 
these things are as though the Omnipresent has said, 
I will be all voice, all ear, all eye. For think you, 
Cebes, that God could exist, and not be glad ? And is 
not creation glad ? In what resides gladness, if not in 
fitness? And is not all fitted? Winter to summer, 
spring to harvest ; the water to the valley ; the tuber 
to the earth; birds to briar-tangles, and the rock to 
solidity? — But this touches not our argument. Heed, 
my friend, I will show you something not less strange 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 3 1 

than severalty existing in individuality. Follow closely, 
else will you not understand me. 

Ceb. The argument is to show "Who, and what is 
man," past, present, and to come. 

Soc. You are right, Cebes ; what he is, what he has 
been, and what he will be. 

Ceb. By an a priori or an a posteriori showing. 

Soc. By both — backwards and forwards, forwards 
and backwards. 

Imprimis, Cebes, it may not be denied, and must 
therefore be admitted, that the judgments made by a 
Thing cannot pass beyond that which is the capability 
possessed by the Thing to form or make a judgment. 
Such capability, as belonging to man — to the natural 
man — is seen to reside in the number, character, and 
nature of the Senses : therefore, man's means of know- 
ing, having existence alone in the senses, he can opine 
of the world only as the world exhibits itself through 
these senses. 

Ceb. This is not to be denied. 

Soc. Judgment, then, is as the media which shows 
the thing that is to be judged ? 

Ceb. Why not? 

Soc. It Was one of not less repute than Protagoras 
who affirmed, " that things are what they seem to be. 11 
Is this right, Cebes ? 

Ceb. It would seem to be right, Socrates. 



32 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Soc. When a man looks upon the earth through a 
piece of red-colored glass, the ground is seen to be red ; 
or if the pigment be blue, then is everything blue ; or if 
green, then all is green. Is the thing looked upon, 
Cebes, of all these shades ? 

Ceb. By Jupiter, it may be none of them. 

Soc. Then are we to say that the sophist is wrong, 
and that a thing is not necessarily what it seems to 
be? 

Ceb. This may but be right ; but what say you, Soc- 
rates, that a thing is ? 

Soc. I would put it in this way : A thing is, to the 
uses <?/*the senses, what to the senses it seems to be. 

Ceb. It is undeniable. 

Soc. Judgment is seen, then, to be the same as com- 
prehension ? 

Ceb. It is the same, assuredly, Socrates. 

Soc. If then it be the case that a man possesses no 
capability beyond the media which signify comprehen- 
sion, it is impossible that he arrive at truth ? 

Ceb. It has been proved to be impossible. 

Soc. Say rather, Cebes, it would appear that it may 
be so proven. 

Ceb. But the argument is to show that a man may 
arrive at a knowledge of himself. Did you not just say, 
Socrates, that a man may come to such knowledge as 
surely as that the Almighty God is a self-acquainted 
entity? 



OR A TALK IN A CE METER V. 33 

Soc. You quote me not wrong, Cebes ; that is what I 
said. 

Ceb. But you have just exhibited that the senses are 
the only media of knowledge, and at the same time you 
have shown that information coming through the senses 
cannot be reliable. Wherein do you differ, Socrates, 
from Anaxagoras ? 

Soc. Not so fast, Cebes ; I said the senses of organic 
life. Has a man not more than these ? 

Ceb. By Jupiter, I understand nothing of your 
meaning. 

Soc. Is there any difference, Cebes, between a man 
and an ox ? 

Ceb. Assuredly it would seem not, Socrates, provid- 
ing that the two be found endowed alike with common 
senses. 

Soc. But is it not affirmed of the one that it is mortal, 
and of the other that it is immortal? How is this, 
Cebes ? Is the affirmative true, or is it the case that if 
the one be mortal the other likewise must be, or if im- 
mortal, so also must be the other? 

Ceb. I may only maintain that unless some difference 
be shown to exist, what the one is, that also must the 
other be. 

Soc. What do you understand, Cebes, by these senses 
of organic life of which we are speaking ? 

Ceb. That there are six means through which a man 



34 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

learns — as sight, taste, smell, hearing, and touch, the 
latter being of two kinds, special and general. 

Soc. And you know of no other media of informa- 
tion either for men or brutes ? 

Ceb. What others can there be ? 

Soc. And the brutes, alike with men, you will main- 
tain, are found possessed of these senses ? 

Ceb. It requires not, that attempt be made to show 
that this is the case. 

Soc. You must hold then, of necessity, Cebes, that 
if Hades exists, brutes, equally with men, are its occu- 
pants. 

Ceb. You say right, Socrates ; this I hold. 

Soc. But is not man, some men — yourself, let us say, 
Cebes, to make a good example — found possessed of a 
concept of certain things of which brutes never have 
exhibited expression? 

Ceb. By Jupiter ! you say right, Socrates. Of the 
Thunderer himself, as an illustration. 

Soc. Well exampled, Cebes, yet no man has ever 
touched, tasted, smelled, seen, or heard a God. 

Ceb. Pardon, Socrates. On such showing it is im- 
possible that a man can know that there is a God ; yet 
it is seen that a multitude of even the most simple peo- 
ple possess such knowledge. 

Soc. But not all people ? 

Ceb. By Jupiter ! no, Socrates ; some of the Positiv- 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 35 

ists, for example. But are you to pretend that there is 
a difference in men ? or, to put it in other words, that 
the men who do not know God are like the brutes, and 
that there are others who possess a something not com- 
mon to this organic life of which we are speaking ? these 
being the ones who have this knowledge ? 

Soc. Must this not be the case, Cebes, unless that 
you can show that God is to be known either by being 
touched, smelled, tasted, heard, or seen ? 

Ceb. On the showing of the argument, I know not 
how to deny it. 

Soc. But you affirm that some men know of God ? 

Ceb. Wherever man exists, there is found, in some 
form or other, this knowledge. 

Soc. How is it as to where other animals exist ? 

Ceb. It would not seem that a knowledge of God is 
found apart from man. 

Soc. Is this not still another paradox that you are 
making, Cebes ? You see and say that two things are 
alike, and yet in the same breath declare a dissimilarity. 
Let me see, however, if I can help you out, for if things 
are alike, then surely can they not be unlike, and if they 
are unlike it is quite impossible that they should be alike. 
There is, then, difference or no difference. 

Ceb. How not ? 

Soc. And if it be not the case that brutes know of 
God, then neither can man have such knowledge, unless 
that the one differs from the other ? 



36 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Ceb. So it would seem to be, Socrates. 

Soc. Neither, unless a difference can be shown, is it 
possible to deny immortality to brutes, if such a prerog- 
ative be insisted on for man ? 

Ceb. It is not possible. 

Soc. We must show then that a man possesses some- 
thing that the brute does not, if we would have any 
reason for believing the former immortal ? 

Ceb. This, Socrates, must surely be shown. 

Soc. But in such showing, might it not come out that 
there are many men not unlike brutes ? 

Ceb. How not ? Melitus, for example. 

Soc. What is to be done with such men, Cebes ? 

Ceb. Such, by the showing, are not men, but brutes ; 
unless, indeed, some other name be selected as a mark to 
them who have this something not possessed by the 
others. 

Soc. You shall make what distinction you will, Cebes, 
but you will find the line a hard one to draw. 

Ceb. Give name, Socrates, to this something which 
makes a distinction of such importance. 

Soc. It is a something never seen in the brute, not 
always in man, yet which finds that which is capable of 
receiving and holding it alone in the human being. 
Suppose that we call it Mind, Cebes ? 

Ceb. We will call it mind, Socrates, if so be this 
please you. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. tf 

Soc. But what do you esteem as mind, Cebes ? 

Ceb. Mind is that which moves matter, or it is a 
something that comes out of matter, and which thinks. 

Soc. Then it cannot be mind ; for not only brutes, but 
even vegetables, possess this you describe, and our pre- 
mise now is that human beings are alone capable to it. 
Shall we then try again, Cebes ? and might we venture 
to name this something Intelligence ? 

Ceb. You mock me, Socrates ? 

Soc. I appeal to Simmias, Are we not at a dead-lock, 
Simmias, unless that we discover a something in man 
never met with in other forms of life ? 

Sim. It needs not to be argued, Socrates. 

Ceb. It is not at all difficult, Socrates, to perceive 
that this last is not the thing we seek, for intelligence 
characterizes, to a greater or lesser extent, all animals. 

Soc. You correct me happily, Cebes; it cannot be 
intelligence. Might it not, however, be the something 
that we call Innate, as, for example, the religious senti- 
ment ? 

Ceb. It is this, Socrates, for surely will it not be 
possible to find the religious in brutes. 

Soc. Yet, as I bethink me, Cebes, it cannot be an 
innate sentiment or thing, because, as we were com- 
pelled to agree, it must be a something found alone in 
man, and it just comes to me to perceive that innate 
and instinct mean the same; and as, undeniably, the 
4 



38 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

instinctive is more marked in the lower animals than 
in man, the advantage would be given to the brutes by 
the admission of such a premise. 

Ceb. By Jupiter, Socrates, I see not how it could be 
otherwise. 

Soc. Shall we call it, then, Individuality ? 

Ceb. Neither this, Socrates, for one has not to ob- 
serve for much space of time even the most insignificant 
of insects before that he perceives an inclination in each 
to look out for itself. 

Soc. Shall we call it, then, a Sense ? 

Ceb. This truly, Socrates, providing that we have 
not already exhausted these attributes, and that it may 
be shown there is a seventh sense, which sense is pecu- 
liar to man. 

Soc. Has a brute, Cebes, the quality of Apprehen- 
sion? 

Ceb. Meaning by this, what, Socrates ? 

Soc. Meaning a perception of things which are not 
to be tasted, smelled, heard, seen, or felt. 

Ceb. Surely, Socrates, no brute ever exhibited pos- 
session of such a quality. 

Soc. Neither brutes of high degree nor of low ? 

Ceb. Neither reptiles which are the lowest, nor 
elephants which are the highest, Socrates. 

Soc. Is any character of knowledge to be found in 
man which may not possibly have come to him through 
the inlets of the organic senses ? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 39 

Ceb. I hesitate to make answer, Socrates. 

Soc. Yet you say that man knows of the existence of 
God. Does man comprehend God, Cebes? 

Ceb. Why not? 

Soc. We have been compelled to see that to com- 
prehend a thing is to have judgment of it ; and, as well, 
did we acquaint ourselves with the fact that judgment 
is that perception which arises out of the uses of the 
animal senses. How then, Cebes, is it possible to have 
comprehension of a thing never seen, felt, tasted, heard, 
or smelled ? 

Ceb. How not, Socrates ? 

Soc. But man knows God, and yet it is seen that he 
may not have come to such acquaintance through com- 
prehension. Must there not, then, of necessity, Cebes, 
be an inlet of knowledge to man, which is a something 
distinct from the senses which subserve the purposes of 
his needs as an animal ? 

Ceb. We must deny that he knows God, or other- 
wise agree to what you suggest, Socrates. 

Soc. We assume as undeniable the responsibility of 
the senses of organic life to the offices of an organism 
in which they are found : the Sight shows the precipice, 
Sensation distinguishes fire. This, Cebes, you under- 
stand ? 

Ceb. Nothing may be more plain. 

Soc. Comprehension, then, resides in reason. Let 



40 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

us see how very fallible a thing this reason is. Reason 
may not justly and truly explain even that which is 
within the province of its judgment, inasmuch as it has 
its lessons alone through the senses; and the nature, 
number, and character of these so vary that it is im- 
possible that like impressions be conveyed to all. Thus, 
an apple is a thing that has taste, or, it is a thing that 
is without taste, according as it is judged of by a man 
who possesses the peculiar appreciative sense or who is 
deficient in it. It is a thing having odor, or, it is a 
thing scentless, — as olfaction happens to be present or 
absent. No man may take it on himself to describe an 
apple ; and yet, whatever an apple seems to be to any 
particular individual, that same thing it surely is to that 
person. To a blind man an apple is a fruit having 
taste, smell, sound, substance, but it is a thing minus 
color ; to him who is paralytic it is a something yielding 
no impression to touch ; to the deaf it has no crackle in 
it when pressed ; if a man could be found entirely defi- 
cient in the senses of an organism, an apple would be, to 
this one, a nothing. 

Ceb. Or if a man could be found having an added 
sense or senses, an apple would be to such what it has 
never been discovered to be by any other ? 

Soc. This surely would be the case, Cebes ; a thing 
is according to the senses by which it is judged. 

Ceb. Then is it not the case that things are not, in 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 4 1 

themselves, but that the existence lies wholly in a some- 
thing that is a percipient ? 

Soc. Wiser than we, my dear Cebes, hold this. 

Ceb. Who ? to name one or more. 

Soc. The subjective philosophers, Plato, among the 
ancients; he whom they call the Idealist, among the 
moderns. 

Ceb. What do such say ? 

Soc. Your memory is strangely at fault, Cebes. Let 
me recall your wandering wits. Heed, if what I quote 
be not of familiar sound. 

Idea is the essence or reality of a thing. For instance, 
there is a multiplicity of beds and tables. 

" Certainly." 

But these two kinds are comprised, one under the 
idea of a bed, and the other under the idea of a table ? 

"Without doubt." 

And we say that the carpenter who makes one of 
these articles, makes the bed or the table according to 
the idea he has of each. For he does not make the 
idea itself. That is impossible. 

"Truly that is impossible." 

Well, now, what name shall we bestow on the work- 
man whom I am going to name ? 

"What workman?" 

Him who makes what all other workmen make sepa- 
rately. 



42 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

"You speak of a powerful man." 

Patience ! you will admire him still more. This 
workman has not only the talent of making all the 
works of art, but also all the works of nature, plants, 
animals, everything else, — in a word, himself. He 
makes the heaven, the earth, the gods, everything in 
heaven, earth, or hell. 

"You speak of a wonderful workman, truly." 

You seem to doubt me. But tell me, do you think 
there is no such workman ? or do you think that in one 
sense any one could do all this, but in another no one 
could ? Could you not yourself succeed in a certain 
way? 

" In what way?" 

It is not difficult ; it is often done, and in a short time. 
Take a mirror and turn it round on all sides. In an 
instant you will have made the sun, the earth, yourself, 
the animals and plants, works of art, and all we 
mentioned. 

"Yes, the images, the appearances, but not the real 
things." 

Very well, you comprehend my opinion. The 
painter is a workman of this class, is he not ? 

"Certainly." 

You will tell me that he makes nothing real, although 
he makes a bed in a certain way ? 

"Yes; but it is only an appearance, an image." 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 43 

And the carpenter ; is the bed which he makes any- 
thing more than a certain bed ; it is not that which is 
the idea or essence of the bed ? 

"It is not." 

If, then, he does not make the idea of a bed, he makes 
nothing real, but only something which represents that 
which really exists. And if any one maintain that the 
carpenter's work has a real existence, he will be in 
error. 

Ceb. But is there not something in way of demon- 
stration to show that the world is not merely sub- 
jective ? 

Soc. The demonstration lies within a man's self. 
That which thinks, Is.* The nervous system of a man is 

*ReneDes Cartes, the founder of modern philosophy (1596), 
gained what seems to be a strictly reliable basis upon which to 
construct a system when he assumed that, in order to find truth, 
one must start in the denial of any or every thing that has not in 
itself the demonstration of its own reality. Any one who attempts 
such manner of inquiry will be compelled to find, with the Tor- 
rainean, that an only thing which possesses such a capability is 
self-consciousness as this exists in Thinking. To Think, is 
necessarily to be. Hence the famous Cartesian aphorism, 
" Cogito, ergo sum." Farther on in this dialogue we shall assume 
to show that it is the brain which thinks; the thinking being an 
organic expression. In saying, however, " it is the brain that 
thinks," the second part of the discourse is to show that this is 
one with saying "it is a flute that plays." The full text of the 
argument is at this point Socratic and is to find its criticism in 
what is to follow. A brain to think with, and a flute to play 
upon, are used as illustrative of objectivity. 



44 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

That which thinks; the nervous system is Matter — 
Matter makes up the world. But whist, Cebes, this all 
in good turn. You doubt not, my friend, that a judg- 
ment which is not to be relied upon to tell us of an 
apple which one holds in the hand, stands in very little 
place when one attempts to reason about God ? 

Ceb. I see plainly that judgment can tell nothing at 
all about God. It is evident, that by learning, God 
cannot be found out, or that search will not discover 
him. 

Soc. Still, he is known ? 

Ceb. He is known indeed, Socrates. 

Soc. Let us hasten to the understanding of that which 
they who apprehend, tell us. 

Ceb. But first, Socrates, I check my curiosity to 
understand somewhat more of this subjectiveness. What 
says the modern to whom you have alluded ? 

Soc. It is not delay, Cebes ; for to know of Berkeley 
and of Idealism, is to find ourselves put far on the way. 

Ceb. If I am not wrong, Socrates, this man was 
accounted as possessed of great virtue ? 

Soc. Virtuous and learned and noble, was he, above 
all the men of his time, Cebes. And yet all this good- 
ness was, perhaps, no merit to the man. 

Ceb. You speak a paradox. 

Soc. The martyr was a god. 

Ceb. It is well, Socrates, that this is two thousand 
years after. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 45 

Soc. Was not Christ a God, Cebes ? 

Ceb. You blaspheme, Socrates. 

Soc. Save your strictures, Cebes, and answer ; yes or 
no. 

Ceb. Only the foolish deny it. 

Soc. And was not Christ a man ? 

Ceb. Meaning by this, what, Socrates ? 

Soc. You are dull, Cebes; meaning that his body 
would bleed when wounded, and that his flesh when 
pierced and torn would breed scars ; meaning that his 
locomotion was by means of muscles, and that his 
uprightness in posture lay in the foundations of a skele- 
ton. 

Ceb. He truly was born, and grew apace, as other 
men. 

Soc. But he was not like other men. 

Ceb. You confound and confuse me, Socrates. And 
if I was not in confidence as to the coming out, I would 
fear to be longer a listener. 

Soc. The God and Christ are one, Cebes; and 
withal, England has seen no such God-man as Berkeley. 

Ceb. How could people see a God ? 

Soc. Not with their eyes, Cebes ; so that all who had 
not other means of beholding, called the good bishop 
a fool. 

Ceb. It was natural, then, that Christ should have 
been deemed an impostor? 



46 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Soc. Like may only be known by like ; such alone 
called him God as were themselves more than mortal. 

Ceb. Must a man, then, be as a God in order to know 
God? 

Soc. Your judgment shall be after the argument, 
Cebes. But heed of the Idealist. Here was a man 
who tutored his body into such complete subjection to 
the infinite, that in the end he lost consciousness of the 
existence of his mortal parts, and came to deny that 
anything like matter had being outside of the percep- 
tions. How, Cebes, could such an one be tempted as 
are common men — meaning, by being tempted, to 
exhibit animal appetites and weakness — seeing that 
these appetites were not present with him, their place 
being occupied by that other something of which we 
are to discourse? 

The philosophers, Cebes, are often ridiculed for dis- 
tinguishing between the not self and the self; but hold 
you ever in mind, that it is the philosophers who are 
the wise men, and that they are the silly who deride 
their distinctions. A Nearches cannot pound a Zeno 
m a mortar. 

Imprimis, Cebes, it is to be understood that bodily 
traits are of temperament, and of the disposition of parts ; 
so that, as the animal attributes of a man are concerned, 
the human differs in no respect from the common brute 
creation — the one race having alike with the other, 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETER Y. 47 

passions, wants, and necessities; and having, for the 
direction, government, and provision of these, certain 
instincts which constitute the laws of an animal organi- 
zation. This being understood — and the truthfulness 
of it requires no controversy — it is to be recognized, 
that in the actions of men, unrestrained and uninfluenced, 
we are to expect that same difference which we perceive 
to distinguish the brutes ; these being found, mild or 
fierce, tractable or intractable, according to the humors 
of each. But heed, Cebes. A man is more, or better 
saying it, he may be more, than an animal. To man 
there may be solicited that, which, when it is taken into 
him, and when it is allowed to become his director and 
guide, is found to introduce him to greater pleasure 
than any known to the instincts, and when a man courts 
this higher something as his supreme controller, giving 
himself up fully to its direction, he is led to find a hap- 
piness and an elevation in living of which the common 
man — the pointer of pins — knows nothing. 

And here it is, Cebes, that we are to find the origin 
of that idea of original sin about which men so un- 
necessarily bother themselves. It is not that in man 
exists an evil principle, unless indeed it can be shown 
that the instincts are evil ; and to show this, would be 
to discover error in the Creator. The rather is it, that 
things which are called of evil and depravity are of ill- 
seeming only through being brought into conflict with 



48 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

that which is of other origin and nature. Heed, my 
Cebes. We are to consider a wonderful paradox, namely, 
that a man may have a soul, and that a man may be 
without a soul ; and if such a distinction be shown to 
exist, it is seen that the difference between what is called 
a good man and what is esteemed a bad one, lies simply 
in this — that the one is a creature living solely and 
wholly in the laws of an animal organization ; the other 
has been raised through an added element into a some- 
thing higher. I will show you, Cebes, that what are 
called the faults and follies of the one class, are to be 
treated with that leniency with which we consider the 
vices of brutes ; it will, on the other hand, exhibit itself, 
that the actions of a God are to be judged by the 
attributes of a God. That then, which — when found 
in man — is deemed of evil in the abstract, will be seen 
to be nothing else than organization ; and it may not 
of possibility have any more of demerit in it than has 
the ferociousness of a panther's cub, or than is to be 
esteemed, as in itself commendable, the playfulness of a 
cat's kitten — both alike are expressions of organization, 
and the ferociousness is as natural as the gentleness, 
the bite as natural as the play. 

Ceb. By such showing no wrong is to be found ? 

Soc. By such showing, charity is to find sympathy for 
the natural actions of animals, whether these animals be 
in shape like unto brutes or men. Heed, Cebes ! The 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETER Y. 49 

law of the man is the law of the association in which he 
finds himself. Everything is wrong which produces 
discomfort; everything is right which yields pleasure. 
To distinguish, then, between pain and pleasure, is to 
discriminate between wrong and right. Evil and good 
are correlative, and the evil of to-day may well prove 
to be the good of the morrow, as, on the other hand, 
it has been often enough found that a good of one hour 
is the sting and smart of another. It was only a week 
back, as well we recall, that my horse, snapping his 
rein, did take to those strong swift strides, which, when 
practised in the fields of his pasturage, we have, to- 
gether, so often extolled, because of the metal and 
fleetness found in them ; yet did the road, upon which 
this time he ran, lead to a precipice ; and thus that 
which we had pronounced good proved an instrument 
of destruction. And may either of us forget the suffer- 
ing which came even to yourself, Cebes, from the abuse 
of things, natural and good in themselves? When 
Lucon drowned himself at the spring, it was only that 
he employed unwisely and inexpediently a thing which, 
to all his previous years, had had for him the meaning 
of that very life which at the last it destroyed. So 
what was it that Zuras said of family ties grown cumber- 
some to him ? And did we not agree with him that 
he had natural right to tire of whom he would, and 
that he might, in the proprieties of the same nature, 
5 D 



50 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

take up whatsoever of the new that he elected ? Yet 
this has not been found expedient by Zuras, for now is 
he seen to be of all men not only the most delinquent, 
but the one most dissatisfied and wretched. Is it not, 
then, wise, Cebes, that a man deny the directions of 
the instincts as hastily as possible ? not for the reason 
that these lead wrong, but because it is known that 
there are pleasanter and better ways in which one may 
walk. As for ourselves, we will assuredly not find that 
we are wrong in agreeing with Epicurus that the pleas- 
ures of the body are not to be compared with those 
of the soul, and while we may take to ourselves no 
credit for being of better natural parts than is Zuras, 
yet do we demonstrate, through what we get from life, 
that we are of wiser action ; for while it is seen that 
our friend has a home which is little different from a 
kennel, others — they who are opposite to him in prac- 
tice — do find his barren spot the most bountiful and 
gracious oasis of existence. And yet, Cebes, both 
kennel and home — as it is not to be denied — find 
their signification in a law of association ; for did 
Zuras live where alone snarl dogs and foxes, and where 
the hospice is unknown, he might not discover the loss 
of anything — he would be poor to wretchedness ; albeit, 
he would know nothing of the absence of wealth. Is 
all this not well put by Herillus, where he so ably 
shows that circumstances and events change the mean- 



OR A TALK IN A CE METER Y. 5 I 

ing of good, just as the same piece of brass might be- 
come a statue either of Alexander, or, — let us say, of 
Cebes? And was I not right when I gave it as an 
aphorism to Thsetetus, that whatever things appear 
just and honorable to each city, these are so to that 
city so long as it thinks them so ? 

There are demigods, Cebes, and these walk the 
earth, and in seeming are like common men ; but there 
is a great, even if an unseen, difference — they are 
not as common men. Who, in all Leyden, was like 
unto the student Heinsius, as he sat in the lap of 
eternity amongst the divine souls ? And what but the 
God carried JEneas in his flight from Dido ? It is not 
difficult to show that a man possesses, or may possess, 
a something, which pertains not to the capability of 
the brute. 

No error is so great, no one so destructive to the 
true purpose and intent of living, as that which con- 
siders what is ordinarily called success, as necessarily 
the true success. No advantage can be a true gain, in 
which the signification is temporary ; no accumulation 
can have the meaning of riches, where the coin has 
currency in the day alone on which it has been 
gathered; yet these are the advantages that a multi- 
tude seek, and which, when secured, receive the 
plaudits of a greater multitude. Is the meaning plain, 
Cebes ? Is it the soul which is to govern the body, or 



$2 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

is it the body that is to govern the soul ? Or shall we 
consider that I spoke the full truth when I affirmed, 
formerly, that a soul while imprisoned in a body might 
not live its life of wisdom? It is a little thing, and 
quick done with, this present of ours, yet where is the 
man but that refuses to enjoy it? Not that men are 
wise, and in an understanding of the transitory char- 
acter of a present, seek to lay up treasures for use in 
some other day that shall be longer; quite the con- 
trary — that other day is the last thing that enters into 
the calculation. Heed, Cebes, a demigod is that 
man whose soul is strong enough to coerce the body. 
As an example, a better, perhaps, might not be pointed 
out than this same Idealist, whose fulness and strength 
of soul were so great that he might not esteem matter 
as being anything else than a subjective existence ; and 
yet, my friend, all the learning of Cloyne's bishop 
did not save the great and good man from the slurs 
and innuendoes of the pin-pointers — but the ridicule 
did not make a pin-pointer out of the demigod. 

One is to understand of Idealism, Cebes, in under- 
standing that God's ways are not as are men's ways, and 
that in proportion as a human draws to himself a soul, 
so, in like proportion, does matter become annihilated 
to him. This, I think, is all, Cebes; although the 
philosophers, when they discourse of Idealism, do not 
put it after this manner, but speak rather somewhat thus : 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 53 

All sensation, they would say, is to be found within a 
man's self. What any one thinks that he sees or handles 
or hears, this he perceives within his own consciousness, 
and not as an object which has existence in itself. The 
existence of a thing lies in the idea of the thing ; and 
as an idea may only exist to the consciousness, so a 
thing cannot be anything else than subjective. 

Ceb. Would the Idealist say that a brick is not a 
brick, or that a tree which stands in one's way is not at 
all in the place where it seems to be? If he says thus, 
does he speak else than nonsense, Socrates ? 

Soc. You forget our own definition, Cebes: "a 
thing is, to the uses of the senses, what to the senses it 
seems to be." Whether a thing exists as object or sub- 
ject, makes no jot of difference as the needs and neces- 
sities of the conscious man are concerned. A brick is 
found to answer the purpose of the wall, and what 
serves the meaning of fruit is plucked from a tree. 
One has no concern to trouble himself as to whether 
bricks or trees are external or internal. 

Ceb. You say that this founder was of great learn- 
ing? 

Soc. He was inspired, Cebes — as men are inspired 
who speak the words of the God within them. 

Ceb. I think, Socrates, that we have here come to 
an involvement from which we shall scarcely extricate 
<5urselves. You accept, with Des-Cartes, that conscious- 
5* 



54 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

ness is existence, and you have declared your intention 
and ability to show that consciousness has existence 
alone in a brain, and that a brain is matter — transfer- 
ring thus existence from an idea to an object. Now you 
accept, as using the speech of the God, one who sep- 
arates consciousness from matter, denying any objective 
existence to the latter. See, Socrates, the God sep- 
arates what you put together. 

Soc. What if we should say, Cebes, that conscious- 
ness is subjective to the God ? 

Ceb. We are extricated, Socrates; and it is seen 
that the God makes a world by the simple act of turn- 
ing a thought to its creation. 

Soc. How would you explain this, Cebes ? 

Ceb. Nothing is easier. Objects being things having 
existence alone in consciousness, we have only to assume 
that in like manner consciousness is subjective to the 
mind of the God; just as you put it, Socrates; and 
thus, understanding, of our own consciousness, how 
things are made to us, we are at no loss in perceiving 
how the God, even by so simple a means as an act of 
thought, may make not only men and other animals, 
but as well a world. Why, even a man, Socrates, can 
do much of the same thing, and indeed, according to 
this showing, he is constantly engaged in creating. 

Soc. Yet, Cebes, these Christians, among whom we 
rind ourselves, dispute as to the ability of the God to 
resurrect their bodies. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 55 

Ceb. Do such not see, Socrates, that in every dream 
they of themselves perform this miracle ? 

Soc. It is strange, Cebes ; but they see it not, even 
though it be so plain. But now that there are no 
Eleven to prevent, let us separate, for I perceive that 
Apollodorus gives much evidence of weariness. To- 
morrow we will have the argument and demonstration, 
and with the God's help we shall not then part until 
we know, even as we are known. 



SOUL. 

57 



THE SOUL. 



Soc. The argument, Cebes, is founded on the quality 
of what we have defined as Apprehension. 

As man knows himself and finds himself, so he is 
able, directly and indirectly, to recognize the ex- 
istence of seven senses: i, of Sight; 2, of Taste; 3, 
of Smell; 4, of Hearing; 5, of Special Touch; 6, of 
General Sensation ; and 7, of Apprehension. The first 
six of these, as we have felt ourselves compelled to 
acknowledge, are common to man and the animals at 
large. The seventh is not necessarily a possession of 
man, yet, when met with, is found in the human alone. 

Whatever, in reality, things may be, things are to 
the uses of the senses what to the senses they seem to 
be ; and a thing, anything, howsoever different it may 
appear to different people, is, to the uses of each person, 
what, to the sense which would employ it, it seems to 

59 



60 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

that sense to be. This, Cebes, we will consider as 
established, unless indeed the keen power of analysis 
that lies within you may discover a weakness, and thus 
demolish the assumption. 

Ceb. My thoughts have done nothing but consider 
the definition, Socrates, since yester-noon it was given 
by you. I accept it as irrefutable. It is a wonderful 
definition, for I cannot but see that it completely 
reconciles even such opposites as the subjective and 
objective philosophies. 

Sim. It is your Daemon, Socrates, that has spoken the 
word. 

Soc. You understand me, then ; the senses have office 
— one sense sees, another tastes, a third hears, a 
fourth smells, a fifth and sixth touch. What, now, 
Cebes, is the office of this seventh? for surely, if it is a 
sense, it may not be without office of some kind or other. 

Ceb. I do not forget, Socrates, that we have pro- 
nounced it to be the sense which has to do with the 
something which distinguishes the capabilities of the 
man from other animals. 

Soc. Well remembered, Cebes. Then, as no office is 
found for this sense as relation is had with the material 
wants, and as a sense may not exist without office, so 
the demonstration is to be considered as complete that 
it is the instrument of man's relation with the God. 

Ceb. Does a sense exist elsewhere than in itself? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 6 1 

Soc. What penetration you exhibit, Cebes But let 
us see. What is a Sense ? For instance, what would 
you call the sense of sight ? 

Ceb. I would say that the sense of sight is an instru- 
ment composed of eyes, optic nerves, and lobes ; these 
constituting a system whose office it is to see. 

Soc. And would you say that if there was no such a 
system* as this, that then there would be no such a thing 
as sight ? 

Ceb. It shows itself to be as you say. 

Soc. Remember, Cebes, you have admitted that the 
measure of things exists alone in the senses. Do you 
mean us to understand by this, that things appreciated 
and understood alone through Sight would have no 
existence to a man who is without this system or sense 
that you have so learnedly named ? 

Ceb. How might it be otherwise, Socrates ? 

Soc. And would you further say that if there was in 
the world no such a thing as the sense of sight, that 
then likewise all things which are seen, would have no 
existence, as sight is concerned ? 

Ceb. This I say. 

Soc. And suppose, Cebes, that all the senses by 
which men know the world were abolished ? 

Ceb. Then it follows, Socrates, that there would be 

no world. 

Soc. What say you, Simmias ; is the conclusion right ? 
6 



62 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Sim. I see not how Cebes may say otherwise. 

Soc. Give heed, Cebes. You have proven to our 
satisfaction that sight exists in Sight, and likewise of 
the other senses that the meaning of each lives in a 
same manner. Now, what is that sense which tells us 
about the God? 

All. Oh! Socrates. 

Soc. Give it name, Cebes. 

Ceb. I am overwhelmed, and dare not speak the word. 

Soc. How is it, Cebes, with men who do not know 
the God ? 

Ceb. It follows necessarily, Socrates, that they do 
not differ from the brutes. 

Soc. A man differs from a brute, then, in proportion 
to the quality and amount of the sense of Apprehension 
found with him ? 

Ceb. On the showing ; this is to be accepted. 

Soc. Then, if a man be met with who, being deficient 
in those common senses which conduce to earthly lore, 
or having them of such mean quality that the judg- 
ment and thinking that come of them are beneath com- 
mendation ; if such a man be found possessed in abun- 
dance of the seventh sense, shall it prove to be the case 
that this one knows more of God than may a multitude 
of brighter men ? 

Ceb. It seems to me, Socrates, that we have only to 
put it thus : If a multitude be deficient in the sense 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 6$ 

of Sight, and one be found greatly endowed in such 
quality, shall not this latter see things clearer and 
better than may all the others, even if put together ? 

Soc. You comprehend me, Cebes. Who knows of 
the God is told by the God. In proportion as a man 
knows of the Divinity, so, it would seem, the Divine is 
within him. Can a man cultivate the sense of Touch, 
Cebes? 

Ceb. Why not? 

Soc. Or may the sense of Hearing be enlarged ? 

Ceb. Witness the refinements of the musicians, 
Socrates. 

Soc. What then follows concerning this sense of Ap- 
prehension? Can a man, Cebes, grow the God in 
himself? 

Ceb. It follows as a necessity. 

Soc . According, then, as a man cultivates the Divine 
sense, so is he found to know of that which the sense 
is; just, indeed, as in proportion to the acuteness of 
the common senses possessed by him is he found able 
to tell well, or indifferently, of what is touch, taste, 
smell, or condition. What we call inspired men are 
men preeminently endowed with Godliness. Moses 
had such largess that ages before the physicist had 
name the sage knew, through the God that occupied 
him, of the secrets of creation. Christ was so full of 
the God that all men who have God in them call him 



64 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

"The God," just, Cebes, as a drop of water might 
call the lake a sea. Yet in turn did Christ speak of 
the God : " Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani." 

Is the God immortal, Cebes? 

Ceb. It so declares itself to be, and knowing neces- 
sarily itself, what is affirmed, is. 

Soc. But what of a man ? Is a man likewise im- 
mortal ? 

Ceb. I may answer only through the argument, 
Socrates. If God is immortal then man is immortal, 
and his consciousness of the immortality would seem 
to be in proportion to the God possessed by him. 

Soc. But how about men who do not possess this 
quality of Godliness ? 

Ceb. Such, by the showing, cannot be immortal, for, 
as we have seen, the difference between man and the 
brute lies alone in this quality, and if men having it 
not, are immortal, we have seen that brutes likewise 
must be immortal ; and this last is not so by the speak- 
ing of the God. 

Soc. Then, walking the earth, there are men and 
God-men — or demigods ? 

Ceb. The argument would show that it is thus, 
Socrates. 

Soc. Then we are to say that that idea of Pythagoras, 
that the soul is a necessary circle, is not a just idea ? 
Or rather would you prefer to say, Cebes, that ^Ethalides 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 6$ 

did, indeed, become Euphorbus, and that in turn 
Euphorbus became Hermotimus ; Hermotimus still in 
turn Pyrrhus, and that yet again Pyrrhus passed into 
the son of the seal-engraver ? 

Ceb. I think, Socrates, that it corresponds best with 
what we opine of the God, to say the latter. 

Soc. But what concerning a transmigration through 
other animals ? 

Ceb. The argument shows that here the Tyrrhenian 
was wrong ; except, indeed, that it might be shown he 
was not without understanding of the transmigrations 
which convert stones into vegetables, vegetables into 
beasts, and beasts into men, and that thus he under- 
stood a Providence which, in the end, brings all things 
into a circle. Think you that Pythagoras understood 
this, Socrates? 

Soc. You must recall what he said of the monad. 
But why say you, Cebes, that a metempsychosis cor- 
responds with what a God knows of himself? — we 
shall say that the God is in Cebes, shall we not ? 

Ceb. If so be it pleases you, Socrates, you may say 
that Cebes courts the God. But make answer; is 
the God, and that which we call Life, anything dif- 
ferent ? 

Soc. They are different, Cebes ; that is, different to 

the extent that one is Cause, the other, Effect. 

Ceb. This has not been shown. 
6* E 



66 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Soc. Nothing has as yet been demonstrated ; we are 
coming to this, Cebes. 

Ceb. Give it definition, Socrates. 

Soc. Will it suit the purpose of what you would say, 
to esteem it as Severalty existing in Oneness ? 

Ceb. I stand rebuked, and will not again forget that 
you have before so named it. And, indeed, I should 
shame to have to be reminded, because of the alarm it 
created. 

Soc. Use this, then, if it stands your purpose, Cebes. 

Ceb. It stands it well, Socrates ; for if the God have 
Severalty, then it follows that the Entity is broken up in 
its offices, and if broken up in its offices, why should 
these go out because that a desk breaks down or a roof 
falls in ; the office is not in desk or roof? 

Soc. Then we are to esteem Cebes as a Pythagorean ? 

Ceb, Give heed, Socrates. Would you say that when 
the God goes out of a man because that the body falls 
to pieces, that then the God ceases to perform an office, 
and that an eternity is spent in the stillness and nothing- 
ness which come of being without office ? 

Soc. I would say not thus, Cebes; but the rather 
agree with what I infer you would say, namely, that 
the story of Ponticus is true, and that Pythagoras is 
indeed the son of Mercury. 

Ceb. Then are we to say that the God has no better 
office than that in which a God-man finds himself? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 6j 

Soc. A God-man is certainly to say this as concern 
is had to himself, and as regard is had to his offices and 
influence. Is not the God the happiness and grace of 
the world, Cebes? 

Ceb. This, of necessity. 

Soc. How is it, Cebes ? 

Ceb. I see it all, Socrates. It is through his resi- 
dence in man. 

Soc. Then does it not follow that the God continues 
as he is known ; that is, as a God-man knows himself; 
for if with each change he should take himself away, 
and come not back again, what could save the world 
from having each day, and day after day, somewhat less 
of that which you say constitutes its happiness and 
grace ? 

Ceb. You would say, Socrates, that it is for a man to 
do his best in a situation in which he finds himself — 
not troubling the God about any to-morrow. 

Soc. I would say, Cebes, that the God has no to- 
morrow. 



MIND. 



WHO, AND WHAT IS MAN? 



69 



WHO, AND WHAT IS MAN? 



Soc. Understand of what has been said, Cebes, 
through what is now said. 

Ceb. Unless, indeed, Socrates, the God has already- 
given me to understand it. 

Soc. It is well spoken. And if it be that He fault 
the present discourse, then is our show of demonstra- 
tion to be esteemed of less import than the sound of a 
bell ; for this, as we well know, has its tone, not in 
solidity, but in that which is directly the reverse of 
this, namely, in emptiness. 

Ceb. Give rule, Socrates. How does the God fault 
a discourse ? 

Soc. He turns from it, Cebes, as not finding within 
it that which satisfies. But give heed, and may the 
God be with us and help us — me, to unravel and ex- 
plain ; you, to comprehend. 

7i 



7 2 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

We start, Cebes, by assuming the existence — as a 
comprehensible thing — of a creation, secondary, and, 
as it io found in that which constitutes its life and 
movements, external to and independent of any im- 
mediate controlling action on the part of a Creator. 
We assume this, because creation discovers to the un- 
derstanding two materials, principles, or entities, and 
two only. The physicist, having these two, finds in 
them everything which has to do with the earth as it is, 
and with the phenomena associated with its life. The 
entities which compose the creation, are Force and 
Matter. 

Exclusion discovers a third entity — an entity ap- 
prehensible, but only negatively comprehensible ; an 
entity which this same exclusion shows to have neces- 
sarily preceded Force and Matter, and out of which 
these must have come. Here, Cebes, is the "Idea" 
of our pupil Plato, and here is the "Substance" — 
the Noumenon — of Spinoza. No learning, no explo- 
ration, no anything, ever has been found able to dis- 
cover Force and Matter as entities of self-creation. 

Ceb. Was it not Spinoza, Socrates, who asserted that 
in a single entity is the expression of all phenomena ? 
If I remember rightly, he queried somewhat after this 
manner. In the beginning, he said, was God, and the 
God was the all. How then may a thing, he asked, 
even the God, being the all and the everything, create 
out of itself a thing unlike itself? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 73 

Soc. It was the question of a profound logician, 
Cebes, and it unsettled — unfortunately, and to the 
great grief of the sage — all men who were not God- 
men. But have you not, even already, answered the 
matter for yourself? Did we not recognize that even 
a man, any man, might do this which the Jew denied 
even the power of the God to do ? 

Ceb. I understand, Socrates. You do not say that 
Spinoza was wrong, but that he erred in using mortal 
eyes, and in telling of what he saw with an immortal 
tongue. 

Soc. You speak yourself with a poet's tongue, Cebes ; 
Anytus himself might not have put it better ; the Jew 
did indeed forget the difference between his own ears 
and the ears to which he spoke. But carry your 
memory back to the admission you made in assenting 
to that which you acknowledged as reconciling the 
opposite conclusions of the objective and subjective 
schools of philosophy. 

Ceb. In showing the mistake of Protagoras you have 
shown the error of Spinoza. I am answered, Socrates. 

Soc. Say rather, Cebes, that I show an error in the 
putting of a thing. But we may go on. Man is of the 
earth, earthy; this, necessarily, because of his consti- 
tution. He may be, or may not be, of the God, godly ; 
he may be without a soul ; he may differ in no respect, 
except in capability, from a brute or from a vegetable. 
7 



74 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Ceb. This you are to demonstrate. 

Soc. This I am to demonstrate. 

Sim. We listen, Socrates, with all interest. 

Crito. Socrates would have us physicists as well as 
philosophers. 

Soc. I would have a man know himself. 

Sim. A moment, Socrates, if I may be pardoned the 
interruption. It was one of these moderns in much 
repute* who, in contradistinction to what you hold, 
taught his countrymen that the Soul is as a tabula rasa, 
and that all that comes to it comes from without — that 
in the infant it is best likened to a sheet of white paper. 
Do you say that this is error? 

Soc. He should have said Mind, Simmias, and then 
it would- not have been error. 

Ceb. Simmias emboldens me to add that another of 
not less character f likened the mind to a block of 
marble, in which the statue is prefigured by the veins in 
the block, and that thus all — defect or beauty — is 
from within, and that nothing is from without. What 
of this, Socrates ? 

Soc. It was the error of mistaking Temperament for 
Mind, and the one was not less wrong than was the 
other — a sheet is not the table on which it lies. But 
let us to the demonstration. Shall we begin, Cebes, by 

* Locke. f Leibnitz. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 75 

asserting that man is an Automaton, and thus agree with 
the physicists ? 

Ceb. This, if so be it pleases you. 

Soc. What would you say of a watch, Cebes? is this 
also an automaton? 

Ceb. Meaning by this, just what, Socrates ? 

Soc. Meaning that it is a machine, which, when once 
set going, runs the length of its spring without other 
direction. 

Ceb. A man certainly is found to accomplish his func- 
tions through a motive power existing within himself. 

Soc. A watch is found able to mark the hours and 
minutes and seconds of a day. How is this, Cebes? 
has a watch intelligence? 

Ceb. By Jupiter, Socrates, you call a smile even to 
the face of Apollodorus. How can a machine have 
intelligence ? Is your question not the same as though 
you had asked whether or not a watch possesses a mind ? 

Soc. Yet, Cebes, let a man question his watch when 
he will, and it tells him the time of day. Can anything 
aside from intelligence tell the time of day? 

Ceb. I see your meaning, Socrates ; intelligence alone 
may tell the time of day. Truly here is a paradox — a 
man tells himself the time of day, yet does not himself 
know what o'clock it is. One's own intelligence has 
to speak to him through a medium. 

Soc. Can an ox speak the time of day, Cebes ? 



?6 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Ceb. I should scarcely like to trust it for the minutes 
and seconds, Socrates. 

Soc. You understand me. Man is a machine; this, 
and nothing different. Yet is there found within him 
an intelligence which is to him what the time of day 
is to the watch. A man may tell another who looks 
upon him concerning things which are not of himself. 

Ceb. But all watches will not tell the time of day? 

Soc. Well suggested, Cebes; only such mark the 
hours as bear the gift of speech. 

Ceb. And you would say, Socrates, that a man may 
be like a watch that runs without direction; that is, 
moving his hands and crying his tick-tack, yet be 
utterly lacking in that which is the meaning of his 
capability ? 

Soc. There is no difference between a watch and a 
man except as capability for office is concerned. See, 
Cebes, we may not of possibility say that the something 
which tells the time of day is of the watch proper, for 
it is seen that at times a watch has no more of such 
direction and office in it than has a stick or stone, yet 
at other times the meaning of the office is back, and 
we trust the voice even for the passing seconds. If an 
intelligence be found at times in a thing, and then 
again be not found in it, can we say that the intelli- 
gence is the thing, or that the thing is the intelligence ? 

Ceb. By Jupiter, Socrates, we could no more say this 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. J J 

than could we say that a man is the house in which he 
lives, or that the house is the man. 

Soc. Then when the Time of day is not found in the 
watch you would not say that Time of day is dead ? 

Ceb. Surely this might not be said, Socrates, seeing 
that watches have been dead, so to speak, for years, 
and after this the office has been found not less active 
than ever. 

Soc. Then because soul is not found in a body 
— that soul which is the capability of the human, as 
the time of day is the capability of the watch — you 
may not assert that soul is dead ? 

Ceb. I will never again deny that soul is immortal. 

Soc. And what concerning its independence of man ? 
Will you deny that it holds different relation to its 
temple from that held by intelligence to the watch ? 

Ceb. I may not deny this, Socrates, seeing that soul 
is found often enough absent from the body. 

Soc. As when, Cebes ? 

Ceb. As when it is not present with any of these 
bodies that lie beneath the tombstones. 

Soc. A sun-dial tells the time of day; how is this, 
Cebes ? 

Ceb. I could have wished the illustration completed, 
fearing to find myself led from that which has been 
made so plain. 

Soc. It is completed, Cebes, only that we distinguish 



?8 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

between soul and mind as between a watch and dial ; 
the latter being, indeed, nothing different from a sheet 
of white paper, which receives and shows that which 
falls upon it. 

Ceb. A dial is only a surface. Would you say, 
Socrates, that this is all that mind is ? that it is a thing 
without intelligence in itself? 

Soc. I would say, Cebes, that it is not, in itself, a 
maker of anything. 

Ceb. Is a man of genius, Socrates, not something 
different, as mind is concerned, from a common man ? 

Soc. Assuredly. But why do you not as well ask 
whether a dial of exquisite construction and markings 
differs from a rude board, out of which is brought the 
shadow by means of a piece of stick laid across it ? 

Ceb. You would say, then, that genius has the mean- 
ing of an accidental refinement, or arrangement, in the 
disposition of parts? 

Soc. I understand it thus, Cebes. 

Ceb. These moderns say that Thought is a function. 
What is the meaning of this, Socrates ? 

Soc. What is the function of a sun-dial, Cebes ? 

Ceb. If I am not wrong, the function of a dial is to 
show a shadow. 

Soc. Does a dial make the shadow that it shows ? 

Ceb. How might this be, Socrates, seeing that the 
shadow is a something external to it ? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. J 'g 

Soc. Yet you say, that to show a shadow is the func- 
tion of the dial ? 

Ceb. I may only maintain this. 

Soc. Then function consists in a giving forth of that 
which comes to an organ or instrument? 

Ceb. It would seem to be as you say. 

Soc. Whatever the quality of a production, are we 
not then to look upon it as of like signification ? that 
is, as a something received and given back? Heed, 
Cebes ; may Thought be else than a something which 
has fallen upon a sentient dial ? Is there any thought 
without experience ? And is thought not seen to in- 
crease, enlarge, and intensify itself according to the 
scope of observation enjoyed by a man ? 

Ceb. But you would have us believe that it is not 
thus with soul ? 

Soc. The functionings of a soul are from within, and 
of itself, consequently the outgivings are in no sense 
reflections. Did not the Christ confound the doctors ? 
From whence, Cebes, were the arguments used by the 
Christ-child? Surely they were not, in any common 
sense, experiences, for a thousand ordinary experiences 
existed with the elders where a single one was to be 
found with the younger ; and yet Age found no speech 
to urge against Youth. But let us on ; our interruptions 
confuse the demonstration. 

A man, the natural man, man as an animal, is found, 



80 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

when analyzed, to be made up of the two entities to 
which we have alluded — Matter and Force. In this he 
is seen to differ in no single respect from any animal 
or reptile which creeps or crawls over the earth, o r 
from any tree or plant that flourishes upon its surface : 
there are differences in the arrangement and disposition 
of particles, but this is all ; the matter is the same, the 
force is the same, and the matter and force are con- 
stantly shifting and changing from one thing to another 
thing, being never continuous in one place or with one 
individual. 

Ceb. Pardon, Socrates, but do you any more than 
assume the existence of these entities, Matter and 
Force ? 

Soc. You lose memory, Cebes. We assume that 
these exist on the evidences of the senses which per- 
ceive them. This has already been explained, and 
needs no further argument. Whether these are, in 
reality, things subjective or things objective, makes, 
as has before been shown, no iota of difference. They 
exist to the uses of a man as the natural man knows 
himself and them, and man must accept their reality 
or be without anything. If these exist not, then man 
exists not. 

Matter appeals to the senses, and to the experiences 
of the senses, as being an insensible material of which 
the tangible universe is composed. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 8 1 

Force may be described, after the same judgment, 
as an energy and power, insensible in itself; being not 
a result of molecular relation, but the cause of atomic 
combinations ; a thing in itself, as Matter is a thing in 
itself. 

There is no matter without its quota of force : for 
being without force, matter would be dead, and in the 
world there is no such a thing as death. Force, then, 
is that vital principle which is the Expression of life, 
and in which resides the meaning of automatic action. 
Has this not been well put by our pupil Plato ? " Two 
efficient causes are there, maintains the broad-headed, 
namely, that which is moved, and that which moves ; 
the things moved are the receptacles formed by the ele- 
ments ; that which moves is the power of God ; ' ' that 
is, Cebes, that which moves, is an entity which is re- 
lated to the world somewhat as the Time of day is re- 
lated to a watch. Do you comprehend ? 

Ceb. Perfectly. 

Soc. Thus it is that Carneades puts it : 

" Nature did make me, and she does together keep me still, 
But still the time will come when she will pull me all to pieces." 

And thus, by Aristotle : Matter is moved by an Entel- 
echy residing in it, this being the cause of a continu- 
ous movement or agitation never found absent. Thus, 

F 



82 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

too, by a modern : * All things earthy are composed of 
monads. A monad is an autarchic automaton, being 
made up of force and matter. Heed still another : f 
There exists, says this one, a " welt-seele," and this 
which, in the language of the metaphysician, is a non- 
ego, is identical with the Ego. 

Ceb. Meaning, this latter, what, Socrates ? 

Soc. Meaning the same as the Time of day of the 
watch — a something which is not self-existent, but 
which yet is independent. 

Ceb. What is that, Socrates, which Hegelianism 
teaches ? 

Soc. The German, Hegel, whose judgment is so much 
valued by these moderns, teaches — and teaches wisely 
— that the world is not an act, but an eternal move- 
ment; that it is continually creating because of that 
which is the force of matter. So, also, avers another, 
whose experience and scope of outlook render his 
reflections among the brightest found among men. J 
From investigations, says this observer, carried through 
all the domains of chemistry and physics, we may only 
arrive at the conclusion that nature possesses a store of 
force which cannot in any way be either increased or 
diminished ; and that therefore the quantity of force in 
nature is just as eternal and unalterable as the quantity 
of matter. Heed an example, Cebes, and consider a 

* Leibnitz. f Schelling. % Helmholtz. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 83 

jelly-fish. Here is a case in which the conjunction of 
the entities we consider is so simple, that no organs 
have been produced. Yet a jelly-fish eats without a 
mouth, moves about without limbs, digests without a 
stomach, nourishes its parts without vessels, and it may 
be, builds for itself a house of shell which no testaceous 
animal can excel. Is there not here demonstration of 
life as it exists in these simples? A jelly-fish is little 
else than matter and force made visible. 

Yet mark, Cebes, what it is that Pythagoras asserts 
with such show of wisdom. It is impossible, says the 
sage, not to perceive that ulterior to phenomena resides 
a Directing Power. We come always to this, my friend. 

Ceb. Does not this modern whom men call Leibnitz, 
teach, with his system of monads, about the same as 
was held by the master Anaxagoras with his homceo- 
meriae. 

Soc. Great words, Cebes, with simple meanings. 
The becoming and departing, said the Master, is a 
doctrine held by the Greeks without foundation, for 
nothing can ever be said to come or depart ; but, since 
existing things may be compounded together and again 
divided, we should name the becoming more correctly 
a combination, and the departing a separation. Anax- 
agoras has put it well, Cebes, and so also has Empe- 
docles: "Body is but a mingling, and then a separa- 
tion of the mingled." See, Cebes, it does not satisfy 



84 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

that we seek for the origin either in homoeomeriae or 
in the monad. There is a Something else. 

The entity which exclusion discovers is an undeni- 
able something, and must exist everywhere ; but, in the 
judgment of the human, what is the entity ? and where 
is it ? He was a wise man and a good one, him whom 
they yet call St. Chrysostom ; and what said the saint ? 
" Of my knowledge I do know that there is a God who 
exists everywhere — that He is wholly everywhere, but 
the how, I know not ; also, that He is without begin- 
ning, ungenerated, and eternal; but the how, I know 
not." And what was that, Cebes, which was so well 
queried by him whom they name the "Heavenly"?* 
"To say what God is not, is much easier than to say 
what He is." 

Ceb. Yet we are to comprehend the God? 

Soc. We are to apprehend, Cebes ; that is, provided 
any of the God be found with us : and if we be not 
thus endowed, we may pass to that plane which limits 
comprehension, and getting thus far we have a negative 
proof in that — through the process of exclusion — we 
know there is something else even though we be with- 
out the sense which allows the taking hold of it. 

Ceb. Let us deny to ourselves, for the purpose of the 
demonstration, that we possess any other lore than that 
of the animal senses, for the other sense, having its 

* Augustine. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 85 

knowledge in itself, needs nothing to its understanding. 
Let us proceed, Socrates, that we may understand how 
man as man is capable of knowing himself, for I doubt 
me but that Phaedo, who holds his tongue so demurely, 
is anxious enough to find out what is the pertinence of 
that exclusion which marks the line between God-men 
and the brutes. 

Soc. You hold me well and wisely to the point, 
Cebes. It is our idea to understand what is the mean- 
ing, and where the end, of scientific inquiry. 

I think, Cebes, we well understand that a man may 
not differ from a stone, vegetable, or brute, save as it is 
the case that he has found with him some material or 
substance or thing not found in the other. 

Ceb. This was agreed to. 

Soc. And we pronounced this something the quality 
of Apprehension ? 

Ceb. This is what we called it. 

Soc. Do the senses, Cebes, perceive as existing in 
creation any thing beside force and matter ? 

Ceb. Why not many things ? 

Soc. Give it name, Cebes ; what, for example ? 

Ceb. I am not clear, Socrates, but that mind is a 
something different from either of the entities you 
name. 

Soc. Will you retract, then, and say that mind is the 
same as soul ? 



86 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Ceb. This I perceive I may not do without admit- 
ting an immortal individuality for men who have no 
showing of the God in them, and as well would I have 
to carry to Hades, brutes and vegetables. 

Soc. But why not admit the one, and carry the other? 
Why should not all men be immortal ? 

Ceb. I am at no loss in understanding that this might 
not be, seeing that a thing cannot be unlike itself. 

Soc. Give it name, then, Cebes ; for if mind be not 
a thing residing in force and matter, and if it be not 
of the God, then we have a great discovery before us. 

Ceb. Explain me this, Socrates : How can a thing 
that reasons be alike with a thing that does nothing 
but reflect that which falls upon it ? 

Soc. If you insist on an answer, Cebes, you must let 
me go on after my own fashion. I doubt not that ere 
long we shall come to the place of a reply. 

A man is an organized body ; a brute is an organized 
body ; vegetables are organized bodies ; men, brutes, 
and vegetables have thus existence and function in 
one and the same law. A stone differs from a vegetable 
only as a brute differs from a man, i. e. , in being of a 
lower and of a subservient intention. A man may, 
and does, live and thrive on stones, but he may do so 
only indirectly. It is for the plant to take into itself, 
and to digest, the stone ; it is for the ox, with his 
several stomachs, to convert many plants into a con- 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 87 

centrated meat, which is the pabulum for man — thus 
soil, plants, and brutes, necessarily precede man, and 
are as almoners to him. 

Man, of his organic nature, may act in organic re- 
lations not more intelligently than do vegetables ; he 
may accomplish his functions, and coordinate his move- 
ments, and, as such actions are concerned, one man 
may not be seen to differ from another ; albeit, between 
any two taken as examples there may be the difference 
of that which renders the one mortal, the other im- 
mortal ; or, the immortal principle, differing in its 
relation with a human body, even as do force and 
matter, may be found to exist in a varying quota : for 
even as it is seen of one body that it possesses much 
matter, of another little ; of one that it is overflowing 
with vitality, of another that it is sinking from lack 
of it — so one man will be found God-like all the way 
through, his fellow shall show nothing at all of the 
Divine. 

Heed, Cebes, here is a beautiful passage from the 
book of the Soofees : " You say," says the book, " the 
sea and waves, but in that remark you do not believe 
that you signify distinct objects, for the sea, when it 
heaves, produces waves, and the waves, when they 
settle down again, become the sea : in the same manner 
men — the souls of men — are the waves of God. Or, 
you trace with ink upon paper certain letters, but these 



88 TWO THOUSAND YEAES AFTER, 

letters are not distinct from the ink which enabled you 
to write them ; in the same manner the creation is the 
alphabet of God, and is lost in Him." 

Organic life, Cebes, is unfilled form — is a letter 
drawn with an inkless pen ; a letter drawn is not less a 
letter made because that it is without color ; a man is 
not less a physical man in that he is without a soul ; 
for even as the ink is not the form of the letter, so soul 
would not seem to be a necessary attribute of humanity. 

Soul is, in a sense, a correlative thing; changing, 
however, never into anything else, being one from the 
beginning unto the end, which beginning discovers to 
us no origin, which end, it would seem, is never to 
come. 

Idiots and fools, say the Egyptians, are those whose 
souls are in heaven, while their grosser parts walk about 
the earth. 

A saint, affirms the Mussulman, is not to be con- 
demned, as are other men, for the commission of 
bodily sin, for his soul being absorbed in the contem- 
plation of the Divine, the bodily passions are without 
other directions than the instincts. 

This it is, Cebes, that the Dervish holds. There is 
but one God, the creator of the world. When God 
made man, He was pleased to give him something 
which He did not give to any other of his creatures 
God was pleased to gift man with an existence like his 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 89 

own, which will not only live in the present life, but 

will continue to exist hereafter in another This 

peculiar part of man's existence is his soul. The 
peculiar character of this existence is such as to lead to 
the conviction that it is more than human, and must, 
therefore, be Divine ; the origin of this soul is due to 
a direct emanation from the Deity ; and differs from 
the ordinary breath of life, which all other animated 
nature received on its creation.* 

Action in a man is of twofold signification ; it may 
have relation exclusively with what is known as reflex 
movement — automatic action — that is, an instrument 
of sensation being touched, as though it might be a 
spring, expression is conveyed to a second element, 
which in its turn acts upon others, and these still in 
turn upon others, until the most complex results may 
be seen to accrue. Yet all these actions have a mean- 
ing but little different from the tones which are given 
forth by a violin or flute. 

Now let us come to the reply. Mind is an auto- 
matic or reflective ability, residing, in varying degrees, 
in all organized bodies. And what is termed Reason 
is this same ability in working action. Let these asser- 
tions find illustration in an experiment common with 
these modern physiologists. If a frog be decapitated, 
and an irritant applied to one of its hind feet, the leg 

* History of the Dervishes. 
8* 



90 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

is withdrawn ; let the irritant be increased, and both 
limbs are flexed ; still increased, all the limbs are moved, 
the frog jumping away. Let now be applied an irritant 
to the inner part of the thigh, and the foot of the 
opposite leg is used in effort to remove the offence. 
Next let the foot be cut from the limb, and, after a 
moment of apparent reflection, the knee is moved up 
so as to rub the part worried. 

The reasoning powers of a man may as certainly be 
independent of a soul, and not be a thing in itself, as 
in brutes what is called intelligence is not necessarily 
of the immortal principle. Which of two musicians, 
the one being in practice the other out, shall be 
found to discourse the finer music? And is it not 
seen to be the case that the best performer accom- 
plishes his manipulations with least premeditation or 
effort? Do not the fingers cover the stops, or touch 
the keys, with an unconscious and unpremeditated 
accuracy? Here, indeed, would what is esteemed 
commonly as reasoning scarcely appear to be employed 
— fingers move quicker than what is called thought. 
It would seem to be an excito-motor result, purely 
and simply; and this, in truth, it is. Thus we find 
ourselves led to maintain that thought — reason — is 
only reflection ; or, to put it in other words, that it is 
response to external impressions. 

Education is the cultivation of the excitability 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 9 1 

residing in matter : the schoolboy, with plodding care, 
toils through the stanzas of a page, the alphabet being 
called into requisition with almost every word ; the 
accomplished reader gets the sense, yet pronounces — 
if reading to himself — never a syllable. The two 
differ alone in that the one person possesses unculti- 
vated natural powers or offices ; the other has a cere- 
brospinal centre, or reflecting surface, so acutely 
responsive, that the slightest possible impression is 
equivalent to a result. 

Man, as an animal, would seem to be of higher 
organization than the brute only as the brute is of 
higher organization than the vegetable, the vegetable 
than the stone ; that is, as he is found to be possessed 
of refinement in attributes. Great parts in men have 
alone the signification of accidental molecular disposi- 
tion — some men have voice with which they sing, other 
men are entirely without voice, being dumb ; so there 
are birds which sing and birds which may not sing; 
mice even are there which chirp in their nooks and 
crannies, teaching the lesson of a oneness in nature. 
The man of genius is not great through his soul, but he 
comes to be marked as eminent among his fellows 
because it has happened that accident endowed him 
with peculiar sensibility on some aspect of the common 
reflecting surface of the nervous mass. He is, indeed, 
like the sensitized plate of the picture-maker, and the 



92 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

one receives and shows forth images not more naturally 
and readily than does the other. Is not genius allied 
with disease, inasmuch as it is an abnormal condition? 
And has not a Genius more occasion for medicine than 
for gratulations ? He who knows the meaning of ge- 
nius, Cebes, pities the possessor, for in what is esteemed 
the gift is much suffering. A Genius reflects as naturally, 
and, in a sense, as unconsciously, as does a looking- 
glass hung out in face of the sun. Unmistakably is it 
the case, that a man may talk well, write well, do well 
a multitude of things, and yet do all that he does in 
the law of his organic relations, differing only, in the 
degree of his accomplishments, from the least impres- 
sible and most stupid either of men, lower animals, or 
vegetables. Soul, on the other hand, is an attribute 
which has pertaining to it associations higher and 
loftier than the things of colleges and books, and sen- 
sitive cerebro-spinal surfaces. As it enlarges in a man, 
so it is found to speak words and act actions of its own ; 
and thus it is that the uneducated Gallilean unfolded 
life-lessons before which the learning and judgment of 
the world stands dumb ; thus it is that fishermen leave 
their nets and write books which universities reverence 
as models in philosophy; thus it is that a Cyrus 
understands his own immortality, and that a Cicero 
finds in old age anticipations more pleasurable than 
even those begotten of the most exquisite senses of 
youth. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 93 

It is through the Genius alone, Cebes, that men are 
enabled to understand of the riches and capability of 
nature; great poems, great designs, great everything's 
are in the way alike of every human brain, just as 
human faces fall alike against unsensitized and sensitized 
plates, and yet are seen to show themselves alone from 
the latter; the great things of the world are of the 
world, and not at all of the surface that reflects and 
shows them. A looking-glass will show a castle, but 
who thinks to credit the mirror as the maker and pro- 
ducer of that which it exhibits ? Ah, Cebes, the glory 
and harmony that are about us ! how little should we 
know of these without the Genius ! 

Ceb. What, if you be wrong in all this, Socrates ? 

Soc. Answer me, my friend. Is the image shown us 
by the picture-maker a something that had residence 
in his plate ? 

Ceb. No man would assert this. 

Soc. Whence then is it? for surely it is not seen 
when the eyes are turned away from the plate ? 

Ceb. Truly, Socrates, it is a reflection caught from a 
something external to it. 

Soc. The image is not, then, a production of the 
plate ? 

Ceb. This might not be the case, seeing that with 
like facility it would have shown a horse or a house. 

Soc. Neither any more are pictures the productions 



94 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

of the painters, verses the compositions of the poets, 
or beautiful designs the creations of the architects. 

Ceb. You would say, then, that men are born to 
different offices? speaking of men as one speaks of 
machines. 

Soc. Men. say this for themselves, Cebes. A man may 
polish and keep bright, but he does not arrange his 
brain ; therefore, may he not of possibility show that 
which it is not in the power of his surface to reflect. 
A man may do nothing different from that which he 
finds within him the ability to do. Carbon arranged 
as a surface of charcoal cannot flash back a sun-ray as 
when it finds its composition after the order of a 
diamond. 

Ceb. Does not this conflict, Socrates, with that 
famous parable of the talents which these moderns so 
continuously use as a lesson ? 

Soc. On the contrary, it is one truth endorsing 
another truth. To whom much is given, from him 
much is expected ; and to whom little is given, from 
him little is required. Is it not thus that men them- 
selves consider machines, Cebes? Bright or dull, a 
surface is not to be allowed to decrease in its reflecting 
power, for according to the polish, so is the reflection. 
A dull face may be made brighter, and a bright face 
may be made brighter still. 

Ceb. But how may a man polish and keep bright 
such a thing as an internal surface ? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 95 

Soc. He is to do it as he does with the instrument 
which is kept from going to rust through much hand- 
ling. Heed, Cebes ; when a man suffers this surface to 
become dull, not only does he cease to give forth any- 
thing, but he becomes himself incapable of receiving 
anything. Many men are little different from mollusk 
or sponge. 

Ceb. You esteem, Socrates, that you have given us 
good and all-sufficient reasons for the faith in which 
you yourself seem so firmly rooted concerning this 
mechanical explanation of mind, and its entire sepa- 
rability from soul ? 

Soc. Analyze for yourself, Cebes, and if the subject 
appeal to you in any different manner, decide against 
me. For myself, what I have said, I believe; and 
this for the reason that, twist and turn this surface as I 
will, it shows me nothing different. 

Ceb. You believe, then, necessarily, that in the de- 
struction of the surface that reflects, that which is its 
function is destroyed also ? 

Soc. Not more truly than do I believe in the nothing- 
ness of a shadow, when the dial is not in place to 
make one. But heed, Cebes, the reflecting surface, as 
it is seen, is used by the soul, just as eyes and ears are 
employed by it as instruments. When the God speaks 
through men, he must use the language which men un- 
derstand. And why shall He not make such markings 



g6 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

on the dial as suits His purpose, and thus show forth 
Himself in the heart, as it were ? What shall the soul 
which resides in a man use as its instruments of action, 
if not these very senses which we perceive as the caterers 
to bodily offices ? Heed, again, Cebes ; what was that 
breathed by the God into the nostrils of the clay- 
formed human ? Shall we deny that this was the soul ? 
Or shall we say that it was the something which must 
be so intimately allied with this, and which, for want 
of better name, we have called the Capability ? 

Ceb. But if the soul use as instruments the senses 
of the organism, how may it be otherwise, Socrates, 
than that thus the God is recognizable by these senses ? 

Soc. Whist, Cebes; the horse no doubt speculates 
over the master that drives him, but think you that a 
horse can measure a man ? Yet what of all this ? Is 
it not enough to have discovered that we possess Capa- 
bility, and that this has for a man all the meaning of a 
soul ? Is this very different from discovering and un- 
derstanding that all men have souls ? See, my friend, 
it is for a man to cultivate his Capability, or to deny it, 
as he wills : the God knocks continuously at the door 
of the heart, seeking to come, even Himself, to wider 
expression; seeking to get more of Himself into the 
world ; urging his right to the temples He has built. 
If a man will not open the door, then he remains, of 
necessity, dual in his nature, and the fulness of his 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. gj 

meaning continues in that which constitutes duality. 
And see, Cebes, what an expression is this of free- 
agency? And what an explanation of that consoling 
passage, " that the kingdom of heaven is within a man." 
Surely, where the God is, there is heaven. A man 
needs but to open his own gates that he find himself at 
once in paradise. One needs not to wonder and specu- 
late as regards the location of the city that is called 
golden ; the brightest spot in the kingdom of the blessed 
has been found amid the filth of a noisome prison cell. 
The man who understands not that the kingdom of the 
God is everywhere, may take to himself the conviction 
that he has not within him the sense of Godliness. A 
man gets farther and farther into the kingdom of 
heaven, as the God gets farther and farther into the 
man. 

Ceb. Heed, Socrates. What, by such showing, be- 
come of the transgressions of men ? Is there no pun- 
ishment for sin ? 

Soc. You ask a question, Cebes, that belongs alone 
to the very ignorant. If you would find out for your- 
self, try transgression, and if you get not punishment 
enough, come back with other question. 

Ceb. Pardon, Socrates, but a multitude of men sin, 
and then glory and pride and pleasure themselves in 
the offences, seeming to find little punishment that 
worries them. 

9 G 



98 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Soc. Foolish Cebes, not yet to have grasped the 
meaning of suffering by negation. Such men, my 
friend, are the most unenviable and myopic of mortals — 
they hug to their breasts bundles of thorns in an entire 
obliviousness to the existence of boquets of fragrant 
roses ; such are as swine, whose dish is a trough, and 
whose nourishment deadens while it fattens. Oh, Cebes ! 
that you, of all the children of men, should ask such 
questions ; and this, while every grave, and every house, 
and every street, swarm with their multitude of answers — 
hell in so many places, and only heaven in so few — 
the Kingdom that is everywhere negated by the Tartarus 
that is nowhere but in a man's own heart — not even 
enough consciousness left to evoke a cry for the chances 
of the Acherusian lake. Whist, Cebes; some men 
love, and some men think they love — what is the 
difference ? 

Ceb. I am well corrected, Socrates. But are you to 
be understood as maintaining that the Deus Mundi is 
nothing different from that Godliness which resides 
with a God-man ? 

Soc. Things dissimilar in appearance and in ap- 
parent nature may be of like constitution. Ice is 
water, Cebes, but water is not ice. Aquosity is 
hydrogen and oxygen, but these gases are not aquosity. 
Soul is force, but Force is not soul. 

Ceb. But, it is natural to query : If all soul be a com- 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 99 

mon soul, how may distinction exist between the whole 
and a part ? Where is God ? the individual God ? and 
where is man — the man that apprehension teaches as 
being possessed of individual immortality ? 

Soc. One, being seated by the side of the great Nile, 
did scoop up in his palm that which contained in each 
drop all that makes the water — yet did the river run 
on as calmly, and grandly, and as individually as 
ever. 

Ceb. And the palmful evaporated, and found its 
way back into the stream ? 

Soc. Yes, Cebes, found its way back into that it was, 
and no man might distinguish that portion which 
answered the purpose of an illustration. 

" As one body seems the aggregate 

Of atoms numberless, each, organized, 
So, by a strange and dim similitude, 
Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds 
In one containing Spirit live, who fills 
With absolute ubiquity of thought 
All his involved monads, that yet seem 
Each to pursue its own self-centring end." 

From the scientific standpoint, no particle of con- 
fusion would seem to exist in viewing as in inseparable 
conjunction the all soul and the individual souls of 
men : for, as to unthinking people, fathers and sons ap- 
pear like distinct individualities, yet does the physicist 



IOO TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

know that such separation is but conventional : for how 
might it be but that all men are in that from whence 
man had origin — that " I and my Father are one " ? 

Ceb. But a son, it may be said, returns not into his 
father. 

Soc. A narrow and most gratuitous assertion. Is not 
the father in his time a son ? and does he not in turn 
go the way whence he came ; and goes not each son in 
a self-same way, forever — coming from, going back, 
into that which is the origin? 

Ceb. But the attributes of God, it is to be suggested, 
are justice and mercy and long endurance ; and men, 
the best of men, are found, too often, unjust, pitiless, 
and impatient. 

Soc. So, also, it is that other water which one has 
from the river is found putrid and filthy, yet we may 
not deny its origin, nor that whereof it is. So, also, 
the brine which comes in from the sea is found saltless 
in the streams of distant meadow lands ; and yet these 
are not two waters. 

Ceb. But man is insignificant, and God is All- 
mighty ! 

Soc. Yes ; so also the Nile which was held in the 
palm, evaporated, and quickly disappeared. Yet the 
great current flows on forever, and deluges Egypt. 

Ceb. But how, Socrates, is to be explained the indi- 
viduality of a human soul, if it is to be esteemed as not 
a thing in itself? 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 101 

Soc. Are not the individualities of children as 
entities, and yet is it to be denied that parent and 
child are one? 

So, also, is it not the case that centre and circum- 
ference are one, for may it be that the former can exist 
without the latter ? Yet is a centre a point so minute 
that human eye has never beheld it ; while a circum- 
ference may be so expansive that it shall girdle the 
world. 

Ceb. But all this is a judgment of soul formed and 
based on a knowledge of matter. 

Soc. Yes, so it is premised to be. It is judgment by 
exclusion — it is comprehension ; yet is it found to 
correspond, so far as it goes, with the definitions of ap- 
prehension. Matter is matter, and it is seen to be for- 
ever in a state of transmigration ; being to-day of this 
body, to-morrow of that. Yet does the physicist find 
it made up of phenomenal particles, which particles are 
eternal and indestructible in their individuality, never 
being lost to themselves. Here, in even so crude a 
thing as matter, are we able to illustrate numberless 
individualities residing in an oneness. 

Ceb. But God is all knowledge. If, then, God and 
the soul of man be one, man, it would certainly seem, 
should have the secret by which He created the earth 
and the sky ; and he should be able to tell unto him- 
self the wherefore and the whereof of life and of action. 
9* 



102 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

Soc. Excellently put, Cebes; you surpass yourself. 
Yet let an answer be found in the confusions of Ly- 
sander, who, on his life, can tell nothing of such - simple 
matters as the muscles and tendons which move the 
limbs of the child he created. He did also construct 
the eye, and what eye is so tell-tale as that of the boy 
Zapater ? Yet has no one ever judged Lysander as an 
optician, and, indeed, he might not tell how many 
humors he did put into the orb ; and of that complex 
thing, the retina gangliformis, he knows certainly not 
so much as the name. Yet it is not to be denied that 
from his creating power did all these things come. 

Ceb. Go on, Socrates. 

Soc. If, now, these conclusions of comprehension are 
not to be overthrown by _ the higher wisdom of appre- 
hension, it would seem to be with Soul as it is with 
Matter and Force — free is the one as are the others. 
Soul is that " Essential Form " as understood by Plato, 
to possess which is to have all good. He who gathers 
of it becomes, in proportion to the gathering, Godlike : 
he who denies and rejects the good, fails and shrinks, 
and withers away even as does he who refuses to take 
to the matter of his body air and sunshine. 

It can only be that God is immortal life, and thus is 
it happy provision that it seems to pertain to a man's 
self, as to what extent immortality is to be enjoyed by 
him. Let man die — for so he would seem to be able to 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. IO3 

die — if he so wills, as a brute dies ; he who so departs, 
carries with him nothing of the immortal ; somebody 
else enjoys his share. It is with soul, Cebes, as with 
gold ; common property is it, yet it is seen that some 
men so strive, and so do continuous battles for gold, 
that they may be esteemed as having converted them- 
selves into statues of this metal ; others, they who battle 
not, go down to their graves without even so much of 
coin as shall suffice to pay for the nails which hold the 
coffin-boards together. 

It is to be comprehended that it is with God — the 
All Soul — as it is with the sun. Day after day, through 
all the generations of man, has this great mystery been 
seen in the sky : yet what child but knows that in it is 
the color of the leaf; the absence of the darkness 
which its presence negates ; the organic life of every- 
thing that lives on earth? yet, that of itself it grows 
never less. And this sun is, in seeming, something dis- 
tinct, and has an apparent separation of millions of 
miles from that which is itself. Wonderful condition ! 
that man has a God and Father, yet is himself God 
and Father. Wonderful ! that a little flower should 
have its beauty by reason of sunshine that is a part of 
it, yet that the sun is a great planet far away in the 
sky. 

In proportion, Cebes, as a man is Godly, so of 
necessity does he grow in apprehension. Mysteries 



104 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER, 

there are which it is difficult to comprehend, yet which 
are easy of apprehension. Is it not felt of every man 
who aspires to work and to live nobly, that such work 
and life are found to lie in, and yet to be without him- 
self? herein being, indeed, one of the many negative 
proofs of an immortal individual principle. Is not the 
negation of the man, with his passions, his weaknesses, 
and his fallacies, a necessity, that one may gain lofty 
ends ? Does not that eagle fly highest which has the 
cleanest wings ? Runs not slowest that animal whose 
limbs are most mud be-draggled ? To apprehend, is 
to know, without comprehending. Does not that 
ignorance — of man's knowledge — which bows before 
the shrine apprehend, yet what comprehends it of the 
Omnipotence that is worshipped. May a mouse compre- 
hend an elephant which is only itself enlarged ? Or 
may the gnat comprehend wherein its wings differ from 
those of the ostrich ? That like be unto like who may 
dispute. Yet who shall comprehend how that breath 
which is the immortal life of man, enters into him, and 
becomes his individual immortality? And yet who 
may doubt that this is ? Not that a Moses, or a John, 
has asserted it — not even because it is an expression 
of the vox populi, which we accept as the leges Dei, 
but because in that exhibit which knowledge calls ex- 
clusion do we find Apprehension denominated, and its 
existence as a Sense demonstrated. 



OR A TALK IN A CEMETERY. 105 

Take lesson, Cebes, and you others who sit among 
the tombstones. Who will perish as cat or dog when 
he may live as a God ? Who will crawl among mold, 
when the bright empyrean invites him? Who will 
exist alone to the performance of animal offices, when 
the Divine asks for and craves his help? Doubt it not, 
my friends, these modern physicists may not have their 
arguments gainsayed or their demonstrations brought 
to naught : a man is an automaton ; mind is a function ; 
and these, when combined, are found to be nothing 
better than a machine ; and as a machine, the parts go 
to destruction and to nothingness; one piece after 
another piece going, until in the end no man may say 
that a machine ever existed. — But the office, — the office, 
O Cebes ! — Is not greatest length of life in an office ? 
He who would have immortality is to find it alone in 
the office of his capability : for of all offices, this is the 
single one that is immortal, and in its immortality all 
that is divine in a man is rendered eternal — love, 
virtuous actions, and all the things which are of Godly 
nature. It is a grand intention This which is the 
capability of a man; it is the grandeur of the God 
himself. Shall a man find himself able to bear such 
office and at the same time give his every action and 
thought to the service of Mammon? Heed, my 
friends, I read you a passage from a famous book of 
these moderns. It is a strange passage, to say the 



106 TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER. 

least of it. See what you can make out of it. But no. 
I read it not to you : let me the rather write it in great 
letters across the white face of a tombstone, that thus, 
whenever you find yourselves in this arcanum, it may 
stare its words into your faces, and thus compel you to 
consider it ; for that it is of vast import to men is not 
to be doubted, seeing that it belongs to that utterance 
which we have learned to be the speech of the God. — 
See ; thus it is, 

" // is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a 
needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom 
of God r 



PART II. 



THE 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE ETERNAL NOW. 

(WRITTEN FOURTEEN YEARS LATER.) 



107 



THE 

PHILOSOPHY OF THE ETERNAL NOW. 



Like to one who adds a codicil to his will, the author 
desires to be understood in what here follows as wishing 
any and all things heretofore written by him to be 
measured and used in conformity with it. In this day 
it would prove no light matter to contend for a system 
of Philosophy sui generis. What is given is offered 
regardless of origin. Perhaps it is most justly viewed 
in considering it as the catalysis of an Individuality 
acting on conclusions reaching from the Apollonian 
Diogenes and the Ionian Anaxagoras down through 
Plato, the Neo-Platonists, the Stoics of the school of 
Epictetus, the Scholastics of the Middle Ages, and the 
extreme moderns as illustrated in Berkeley, Kant, 
Hegel, Auguste Comte, Schopenhauer, and, not least, 
that Henry Thoreau who somewhere picked up and 
preserved for us, like to gold carried in a rusty bag, a 
couplet which poor and rich are alike to be profited in 
remembering, — 

" We can make liquor to sweeten our lips 
Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips." 

10 109 



" Let me be sick myself, if some time the malady of my patient 
be not a disease to me ; I desire rather to cure his infirmities than 
my own necessities : where I do him no good methinks fee is 
scarce honest gain, though I confess 'tis but the worthy salary of 
well-intended endeavor. 

" I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than Divinity 
pride or avarice in others. I can cure vices by physic when they 
remain incurable by Divinity ; and they shall obey my pills when 
they contain their precepts. I boast nothing, but plainly say, that 
(by reason of not understanding) we all labor against our cure." 
— Religio Medici. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

To see around a world with which man relates is to see all that 
concerns him. 

Crito. How feel you, Apollodorus, has the world 
been seen around ? 

Apollodorus. In truth, Crito, while Socrates has 
always seemed to me the most satisfactory of the phi- 
losophers, yet as to this subject of who and what we 
are, whence we come, and whither we go, he appears 
lacking in a completeness which leaves his other dis- 
courses faultless as to fulness. There is a something 
that remains unseen and unconsidered : I am sure 
of it. 

Crito. Here are lines from one of the countless 
books of these moderns. They seem to have new ring 
in them. Perhaps if analyzed they will furnish the 
unseen and unconsidered. The reading is as follows : 
" There is but one universe ; visible and invisible are in 
it. He who travels in a dream travels as one awake, 
only by the former water is found to support and atmos- 
phere to hold up. A dreamer is stopped by no turn- 
pike gate; he needs no conveyance from continent to 
continent. . . . He differs from the other self, not in 
h 10* 113 



1 1 4 INTR OD UCTOR Y. 

being divested of body, but as Matter, of which body- 
is composed, differs in phenomenal expression. Celes- 
tial, while one with terrestrial, is yet of relation with 
wider and freer action ; this, in a sense, as birds fly 
while worms creep. A dreamer sees everything while 
himself unseeable. A dreamer finds a new state while 
unconscious that the state is not the common lot of 
everything and everybody. . . . Dreamers and the 
dead are one."* 

Apol. Dreaming souls are living souls. Soul is im- 
mortal. There is correspondence with what the master 
teaches. 

Crito. There is as well lack of correspondence, Apol- 
lodorus, for men without souls, and even dogs, dream. 

Apol. Crito, as the God lives, if it be not Matter 
which dreams, then is there necessarily a Something 

not yet discovered by Socrates. See ! who is this 

graybeard that approaches ? 

* For enlargement of this see " Nineteenth Century. Sense." 



THE ETERNAL NOW 



. . . "To strive after and to get the secret of the Arcanum. To 
learn of the mystery of the philosopher's stone. To get entrance 
into the Spiritus Sanctus. To accomplish the circle of the Universal." 

..." For a brute beast, the grass under its nose ; nothing 
else. For an alchemist, gold. The elixir vitae and liquor ado- 
lescentiae for the Immortal. For illuminati the fruit growing in the 
midst of the garden."* 

Simmias. As I live, Socrates, here is your old an- 
tagonist, Protagoras, come again, as we are, two thou- 
sand years after. 

Protagoras. Hail, worthy Socrates ! 

Socrates. Hail, indeed ! Truly doth it seem that 
distance is one with limitation, big one with little, 
eternity one with time ! 

Prot. More - than seems, Socrates, — is ! Universal 
advances as runs a circle. Earth analyzes one with 
element. Past and future resolve into present. As phi- 
losophers we have been groping about as do eyeless 

* See " Nineteenth Century Sense." 

"5 



Il6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

caterpillars, measuring ever beyond for what is directly 
around. What a circle is, that the lengthened, the 
shortened, the broadened, and the narrowed is. All 
is Now. Now is all. In understanding of Now is 
knowledge of Self and of relation of Self to the Uni- 
versal. Universal is an Eternal Now. 

Soc. Pray what god has altered your speech, Pro- 
tagoras, that you bring a new revelation? perhaps, 
however, you put a riddle for our dulness to guess at. 

Prot. A riddle, worthy master, solved in your greet- 
ing ; " distance one with limitation, big one with little, 
eternity one with time;" there is, however, if so it 
please you to call the word, riddle within riddle, namely, 
seeing without eyes, hearing without ears, running 
about without legs, and being immortal without soul ! 

Cebes. By the gods, Protagoras, you bring riddle 
and revelation combined if you are to maintain and 
show immortality for man independent of soul ! 

Soc. Whist, Cebes, let it go ! 

Sim. The master, Protagoras, has been conversing 
on a somewhat like theme, and no doubt, if pressed, 
will pleasure us by renewing the talk, particularly as it 
seems you have something new to tell, or, if not this, 
some" new manner of putting old matter; the argu- 
ment was founded, indeed, largely on that long-ago- 
uttered saying of yours, that "things are what they 
seem to be," — Socrates denying this and showing ir- 



THE ETERNAL NOW. WJ 

refutably, as it appears to all of us, that it is just the 
other way, nothing being what it seems to be. 

Prot. We will have no dispute here, worthy Sim- 
mias. I was wrong, Socrates is right. Yet it is not 
untrue that things are what they seem to be after a 
certain manner, as is proved in sitting upon a chair 
which certainly supports the sitter, or in lying upon a 
bed which holds one up. 

Ceb. Socrates puts it after this manner, Protagoras. 
"A thing is," he says, "to the uses of the Senses 
what to the Senses it seems to be ; it is never anything 
else." 

Prot. Did he say that, Cebes? then has he never 
said, nor will he ever say, anything better. Do you 
perceive that thus man and the universe are pro- 
nounced identical, which is one with saying that the 
world is nothing else than what the man is ? 

Ceb. It impressed us most forcibly, Protagoras, 
although we did not make out of it all that you 
seem to. 

Prot. That is because your ears are not yet trained 
to distinguish basal from minor truths. Pray, what 
other wonderful things has Socrates been saying ? 

Ceb. Shall I speak, Socrates, or will you ? 

Soc. Protagoras no doubt prefers hearing you, seeing 
to whom he addresses himself. 

Prot. No offence, worthy master, I will hear the 



Il8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

disciple first, thus securing what he has learned, re- 
serving the teacher for higher purposes. 

Ceb. Our standing-place to-day, Protagoras, is, that 
the human soul is identical with what these moderns 
know as God ; this in the sense that a wave is one with 
the sea out of which it arises and into which it re- 
turns; that a human soul is immortal by reason of 
being one with God, just as the wave is water by 
reason of being water, no matter whether merged in 
the common mass or showing as a circling crest. Soc- 
rates holds that presence of soul is not necessary to 
human existence, and that a man can live and die 
without a soul. He holds, too, that absence of soul 
is lack as to possession of the immortal requisite. 

Prot. Socrates, and the rest of you, have ceased, 
then, to be Socrates and the others, and have become 
God? 

Ceb. Why, really, Protagoras, it would seem to be 
as you suggest, otherwise immortality has not come to 
us, even though two thousand years have passed since 
the master and you met at the house of Callias in 
Athens. 

Prot. There seems to me something more, Cebes. 
Socrates being, according to the showing you attribute 
to him, no longer Socrates, but God, — that is, if two 
thousand years be more than a generation, — it follows 
necessarily that God once was Socrates ; putting it, as 



THE ETERNAL NOW. II9 

happily you did, that the sea is a wave and a wave 
is the sea. You say, however, that Socrates holds 
the soul as not necessary to human existence ; is this 
different from holding that a wave is one with the 
sea, yet that the sea is not one with the wave ? 

Ceb. I think, Protagoras, had you heard the beau- 
tiful exposition of the subject by the master, you would 
have agreed as to the conclusions. Socrates holds 
that animals are automata, being, as he affirms, made 
of Matter, consequently that the meaning of them is 
strictly one with that of machines, which, being con- 
structed, serve a temporary purpose, and then go their 
way into a common nature. All men, he says, who 
are not God-men are of likeness with brutes; conse- 
quently, as the brutes are not immortal, the men can- 
not be. 

Prot. I think I understand. Man, you would say, 
is one with the brute unless not one with the brute, 
difference existing in possession of soul by some men 
and absence of this quality as to the others. Putting 
this in other words, the immortals are dual men and 
the mortals are of simple single signification ; that is, 
being things of Matter as are brutes and trees and 
things at large. 

Ceb. It is thus I understand the master, although he 
uses the term dual for ordinary animals; the other 
thing beside Matter being Force. 



120 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Prot. Meaning by Force what, Cebes ? 

Ceb. Why, it plainly shows, Protagoras, that a moved 
thing implies a mover; and it is this latter that Socrates 
names Force. He -calls Force an entity in the sense 
in which Matter is named an entity; just as you and 
I would speak of a wheelbarrow, and of a man that 
wheels it, as being separate and distinct things. 

Prot. But it is certainly seen by Socrates that there 
.is variety as to Moving things ; for example, water 
turning a wheel, wind lifting and strewing dried and 
fallen leaves, a stream running from higher into lower 
lands, branches pushed out by the trunks of trees, 
buds enlarging into fruit, and so on, numberless 
things. These moderns, among whom you and I now 
find ourselves, speak of force under a great variety of 
names, — mechanical, chemical, electrical, magnetic, 
biological; in short, so many different kinds are 
named by them as quite to confound one.* 

Sim, I entreat the master to speak. 

Soc. You entreat not well, Simmias. A discourse is 
not wisely interrupted so long as they who listen have 
promise of learning from it. Protagoras is to be 
reminded, however, that these same moderns have 
quite run away from the four elements as Originally 
propounded by the Ionians, namely, earth, air, fire, 

* See " Thinkers and Thinking." 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 121 

and water, and now speak of them as some seventy in 
number. Ionians and moderns are to be declared 
alike wrong in that they mistake appearances, or, bet- 
ter called, phenomena, for a Thing itself. There are 
neither seventy elements nor four, but one. 

Prot. You speak dogmatically, yet I agree advisedly, 
Socrates. 

Soc. It is to be accepted, Protagoras, that the find- 
ing of definition lies with taking things apart, for the 
reason that taking things apart is one with learning of 
what they are made up. We find, for instance, that 
the chemistry of to-day differentiates seventy elements, 
while only a decade of years ago it enumerated but 
sixty, and still farther back so few as four ; now after 
such manner of enumeration are we to decide other- 
wise than that chemistry knows nothing as to the num- 
ber of the elements ? 

Prot. I accept as you say, Socrates. 

Soc. An element being an indivisible and the indi- 
visibles of the chemist being found never anything but 
Matter, does it not necessarily follow that the ultimate 
is alone the elementary, and that all things arising out 
of or existing in this elementary are appearances, or 
phenomena? Hence the elementals are not several, 
but one, namely, Matter. In like manner we are not 
to speak of forces, but rather of Force. There is, we 
are to say, Force. This we say by reason of finding 

F II 



122 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

movement where motion could not exist without a 
mover. Anything may be doubted sooner than doubt 
movement in things. Variety as to expressions of 
Force is phenomenal, just as we have seen that ele- 
ments are resolvable into Element. 

Prot. Is Matter an Entity, that is, a Thing in itself, 
being no other thing? 

Soc. There are two things, as it seems to me, Pro- 
tagoras, which are themselves and no other things, 
God and Matter. 

Prot. Being Entities, or Things which are them- 
selves and no other things, which is first, Socrates? 
for I presume you to acknowledge that Entities had 
beginning? 

Soc. In truth, Protagoras, I know nothing either as 
to beginning or ending, nor do I assume to know 
what Matter is save as use shows to user. 

Prot. I have seen a dead dog turned over in the 
sunshine, Socrates, by reason of gases evolved inside 
his unbroken skin. Was the carcass moved by Force? 

Soc. A moved thing is moved never save by a 
mover. 

Prot. Gas existing by reason of putrefactive change 
is, then, a form of Force ? 

Soc. Undoubtedly. 

Prot, We have understood you as maintaining 
mover to be one thing and the moved another thing : 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 23 

is there not conflict here, Socrates, considering what 
you admit gas to be ? 

Soc. You seem justly to show conflict, Protagoras. 

Prot. Shall we modify, then, and say that Force is 
one with Matter, and thus not class it as one with God ? 
for if there be but two things we must necessarily call 
it one or the other. 

Soc. Anything and everything, Protagoras, that is 
not resolvable into phenomenon compels recognition 
as an Entity : so if it be that the judgment brought 
with you out of the centuries shall be able to show 
this thing we call Force as having its existence in 
some other thing, then it is properly placed when 
called phenomenon. 

Prot. But it is your views I want, Socrates, and not 
my own judgment, for as I look at the subject it seems 
to me not otherwise than as follows. Finding, for ex- 
ample, water to be a mover, I find water to be a com- 
bination of the gases oxygen and hydrogen ; and find- 
ing wind to be a mover, I find wind made up, alike with 
water, of gases. Taking in turn these gases, I find them 
phenomena by reason that they are resolvable into 
Matter, so out of the analysis I again find Matter a 
mover of itself. Still again. If one take up a magnet 
and bring it into any near relation with filings of iron, 
the particles will be seen suddenly agitated and moving 
toward the stone; here moved and mover are one as 



124 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

to origin, being iron ore. Heat moves a bar of metal 
one way and cold moves it another way ; to distinguish 
heat and cold, as expressions of Matter, it is alone 
necessary to strike an anvil with its hammer or to rub 
together briskly two pieces of wood. 

Soc. You are saying undeniable things, Protagoras. 

Prot. How, then, Socrates, is a thing one or many ? 

Ceb. You forget, Protagoras; Force is pronounced 
by Socrates One, the Many being expressions of this 
One. 

Prot. Surely yes, Cebes; but showing itself as a 
form of Matter, is Matter the One that is meant, or 
is there some other One? 

Soc. Your putting of the subject is more than 
admirable, Protagoras, yet we are not to let you 
clear without learning out of . your knowledge the 
meaning of that wonderful power which presides over 
the beating of the heart, the moving of the lungs, 
and, more marvellous than either, the hourly compo- 
sition and decomposition of bodily parts. Would 
you call this Matter presiding over itself, or will you 
say that here Matter is presided over by a Something 
not itself? 

Prot. I would say neither, but rather put it as 
Matter influenced by circumstances of relationship, 
just as one would not be disputed in asserting that 
metal proportioned after the form and manner of a 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 25 

watch will accomplish functions not possible to the 
same metal moulded into shape as a bell. 

Ceb. I think I catch your meaning, Protagoras, 
but here is implied Intelligence, for surely metal is 
neither watch nor bell, save through a directing 
cause lying apart from itself? 

Prot. The Intelligence, Cebes, is with him who 
made the first watch and bell ; for, consider, watches 
are made everywhere, yet he who was the watch-in- 
ventor seems to have nothing to do with the making. 
Here Intelligence is not a thing apart from the watch- 
inventor, although when it is considered that this 
artisan was a single individual and had a fixed habi- 
tation, and that watches are countless as to number, 
and are met with the earth over, it may not be en- 
tirely easy to appreciate all this movement as lying 
with the original watch-inventor, while at the same 
time we are impressed that it cannot, in possibility, 
lie anywhere else. 

Ceb. Certainly it lies with the watch-inventor. 

Prot. If, then, Cebes, a simple man is found able 
to put into lifeless metal a law that never varies and 
that goes on forever no matter where and how many 
the watches, is there any difficulty in knowing what 
force is, seeing it to be one with this found with the 
metal ? 

Ceb. Crystal shows not more clearly. Whatever 
11* 



126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

or whoever is the designer of the Universe of Matter, 
the measure and meaning of the running are with him 
or it, as watch-running is with the watch-inventor. 

Soc. Protagoras, I forgive you old offences. You 
too have said a best thing. Force is the law, or in- 
vention, or purpose of the God impressed on Matter; 
you have illustrated what Anaxagoras confused. 

Ceb. And may we not say, Socrates, that the ex- 
istence of the God is proved in the existence of the 
watch-inventor? 

Soc. Itself says it, Cebes. Intelligent and har- 
monious design exists not elsewhere than in Intelli- 
gence. Denial of God compels disproof of a watch - 
inventor. 

Prof. Let us come back to the subject of Soul. As 
I understand your quotation of the master, Cebes, this 
is a quality entirely identical with the God. 

Ceb. Exactly. It is a quality that man of his 
animal nature can get along without, for it is of no 
relation with animal parts. The master holds im- 
mortality to be appreciable by man in exact propor- 
tion to the God found with him ; using somewhat of 
your own illustration, he likens the God in relation 
with a man to Time-of-day in relation with a watch. 

Prot. He must hold, then, necessarily, that a man 
who has lived many years possessed of soul might 



THE ETERNAL NOW. \2J 

accidentally make exit at a time when soul is not with 
him, for certainly it is seen of the best watches that 
Time-of-day is at times entirely wanting. Does Soc- 
rates maintain that a man so fixed has lost his immor- 
tality? Surely his premises lead nowhere else. 

Ceb. The words are, "his fate is that of all other 
purely Matter-composed things." 

Sim. As the master will not speak, I am forced to 
say that by his showing Protagoras seems right in 
assuming immortality a doubtful attainment even as 
the God-men are concerned. More than this, it 
seems to me that even for a man to die possessed of 
the God-part is nothing different from a liberation of 
this part, which then gets back into its general self, 
just as the Matter of which his body is composed gets 
back into the general sum of Matter. 

Prot. How might it be otherwise? A man, like 
a wave, is not a thing in himself, but exists as ex- 
pression of a thing not himself; this both as to body 
and soul. Where would a being so composed go if 
not whence he came, — body back into Matter, soul 
back into God? Socrates must needs mend his argu- 
ment. Strange, more than strange, that while so 
near catching he has never caught. He continues 
to miss what was lacking when two thousand years 
ago he and Plato sought after the mystery and mean- 
ing of selfhood. 



128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Ceb. Give it name, Protagoras, for interest enlarges 
with your words. I see plainly that Soul cannot be 
one with Individuality, and that unless man be more 
than soul and body he cannot be immortal in the 
sense of self-consciousness. 

Prof. Socrates is right so far as he goes. I accept 
with him as being irrefutable the fact of oneness as to 
soul and God. He might have spoken further in 
telling that here is to men the meaning of the king- 
dom of heaven, and as well have wisely added that 
in such knowing of like by like is stronger proof of 
the reality of God than is found in his " Argument 
of Design." 

Sim. The confusion, Protagoras, ss told by Cebes, 
lies not with oneness as to Soul and God, but as to 
continuous existence of conscious individuality. Con- 
cerning the former the master has been most explicit, 
and has shown that attainment or loss of heaven is 
nothing different from the getting or losing of money, 
or of other things for which a man may care, yet of 
which he does not take care. Socrates assuredly has 
pulled a veil away in showing to us that heaven and 
hell are made and furnished by men and not by any- 
body or anything else, also that it requires nothing 
more than a step or an act to change place as to 
either. This beautiful and self-proving thing he gets 
from the Christian's Bible. The proposition he 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 29 

argues from reads, "the kingdom of heaven is within 
a man."* 

Prot. Has Socrates been able to show you this beau- 
tiful thing without bringing future into present and as 
well showing past as one with to-day? 

Ceb. Protagoras, you repeat your riddle ! Yet, if 
you do, where is the house of Callias ? Since we have 
been conversing I am asking myself as to whether or 
not our talk is a dream. Certainly there was a long 
ago, otherwise there is a present that in some mys- 
terious way is one with a past. 

Prot. How if we dismiss the confusion by accept- 
ing what was before propounded, namely, that there 
are neither years back nor years in front ? Consider, 
Cebes ! Viewing the universe as a boundless circum- 
ference, which undoubtedly it is, how impossible is it 
that centre could be elsewhere than alike anywhere and 
everywhere, or, conversely, that it should be nowhere ! 
Again. Defining Eternity as representing absence of 
beginning or ending, is this else than deciding it an 
eternal Now?f 

Ceb. You mean, Protagoras, that if a thing have 
neither beginning nor ending it is necessarily without 
movement? 

Prot. Ask yourself, Cebes, if this be not its only 

* See this book, p. 96. Also see " Nineteenth Century Sense." 
f See for demonstration " Nineteenth Century Sense." 



[30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

possibility. I mean exactly what I say. There has 
not been, nor can there be, any term, period, or exist- 
ence that is without a state that has no without or that 
is not within a state where there is nothing but within. 
Consider ! We have divisions or measurements which 
are called hours of the day, and others denominated 
weeks and months, and still others named years, but 
what are these save arbitrary distinctions, inherent in 
a common thing, made by men for sake of conveni- 
ence? A watch the hands of which do not move is 
equally right with a running one three times in twenty- 
four hours, and this it would continue to be so long as 
a single man might be upon the earth to look at its 
face. 

Ceb. I think I catch the idea ! You mean, Protago- 
ras, that time being Now, eternity cannot be anywhere 
else, for the reason that there is nowhere else? 

Prot. Look at it after still another manner, Cebes. 
Eternity having as its condition neither beginning nor 
ending, does it not necessarily follow that anything 
and everything is within, or between, this no-begin- 
ning and no-ending? 

Ceb. By the gods, Protagoras, you declare and 
show that we are now in eternity ! 

Prot. The thing declares and shows itself, Cebes. 
Assuredly we are now in eternity. Two thousand years 
ago we were in eternity. We shall be in eternity ever- 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 131 

more, for the reason that there is nothing besides 
eternity. 

Ceb. What strange, yet apparently irrefutable, thing 
is this you are propounding? Truly you do not fail 
to recognize in the showing of the argument life and 
living going on forever as these now are ; that is, man 
changing into nothing else? 

Prot. Whist, Cebes ! he may have wings and fly, 
or he may be without legs and run. Does not a man 
retrograde or advance? 

Ceb. I mean that he does not, in any individual 
sense, turn into something else. 

Prot. Into an Angel, would you say, Cebes ? Why, 
Socrates, according to the telling, has shown how he 
may metamorphose into the God. For myself, I have 
seen beneficent seraphs and malignant devils sitting, in 
the shape of men, on the common seats of a circus. 

Ceb. Into God or into Matter, Protagoras; being 
himself nothing save for a little while. 

Prot. Never mind the two thousand years, Cebes, 
but consider two minutes. How is it that a man is 
never exactly the same any two minutes, yet that he 
always knows himself as nobody else ? 

Ceb. We may ask Socrates the question. 

Prot. Let the master alone, and see if yourself can- 
not answer it. Let us say that once Cebes was a 
bullock and that some other once he was a waving 



132 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

wheat-head, yet that never has he been either bullock 
or wheat-head or anything else but Cebes. Heed ! the 
bullocks and the wheat-heads are Matter, so likewise 
the body of Cebes is Matter. There is but one Matter. 
Sleeves are one with arms ; trousers one with legs. 
Eaten meat and bread at a breakfast -table are in turn 
Eater at a supper-table. Do you catch my meaning ? 

Ceb. I think so. You speak, as does Socrates, of 
the body of man which is not the man? But how, 
Protagoras, do sleeves become arms, or things that are 
eaten turn into things that eat? 

Prot. Surely the master who has told you out of his 
inspiration of the oneness of human souls with God 
has not left unexplained so simple a thing as this ! 
Heed, Cebes. Arms are one with the dust of the 
earth and sleeves are one with the dust of the earth, 
likewise the same as to animals that are eaten and ani- 
mals which eat. Consider the law of correlation, 
meaning by this the law of reciprocal relation. We 
speak of a pile of brick or of a brick house, difference 
lying with the relation of the bricks. We say a cotton- 
boll or a cotton sleeve, the things being absolutely one 
save as to expression. We say the fat of men and the 
oil of cotton-plants, the things being not two by reason 
of convertibility into each other. Further, Cebes, 
consider. If a cotton-plant have in itself sleeves and 
oil, and if in place of sleeves we take oil, which latter 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 33 

is found quickly convertible into human flesh, needing 
to such end only to be swallowed into the stomach, is 
it not seen that difference lies solely with election \ 
that is, whether we will have the plant outside the skin 
or inside it? Again. Oil being turned into flesh, 
which flesh is the thing that hungers, is not the oil 
found turned Eater? Still again. Is not a cotton- 
plant seen to come out of the dust and to go back into 
it? Consider closely, Cebes. Everything that has 
corporeal substance is, as Empedocles puts it, "a min- 
gling and then a separation of the mingled." Matter 
belongs to no form or person. The rush of tides is 
not more impetuous toward change of place than is oil 
or flesh as these seek constantly varying affinities. No 
man's body is his own in any more permanent sense 
than sleeves are his own. Sleeves and body are con- 
tinually changing ownership, the latter, as to its en- 
tirety, never being worn twice by the same owner. 
Environment, not body, is the word. Ourselves are 
enveloped by what is called ourselves, yet this What is 
as much all other selves as us, save as it temporarily 
resides with us. To perspire, to have one's hair cut 
off, to lose blood, to wash epiderm from hands or face, 
are only appreciable examples of similar inappreciable 
acts going on continuously, which acts give back to 
nature her loans, others being taken in their place ; this 
back and forth forever. 

12 



134 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Ceb. Surely not forever, Protagoras. Men die ! 

Prot. Whist, Cebes ! You already forget that men 
are now in the forever. What you mean is, not that 
men die, but that Environment changes form or ap- 
pearance. 

Ceb. You must explain what I mean, Protagoras, 
lor, Jupiter being my witness, the thing is getting too 
deep for me. 

Prot. The meaning, Cebes, lies with equal immor- 
tality of Man's body and Soul. Consider ! If body 
and soul are in the Now, then they are in the eternity; 
the Now being one with the eternity. 

Ceb. But, Protagoras, you have just argued that 
Matter belongs to no individual man, and you have 
accepted, with Socrates, that Soul is identical with the 
God : how, then, in possibility, is a man a man in him- 
self, or how does he go on forever? 

Prot. Heed, Cebes ! We have as yet uttered no 
word of the man, nor has Socrates found him out, 
save indirectly. Certainly we are agreed that a man 
is not the clothes that are worn, nor is it to be disputed 
that clothes and body are one, therefore is he not the 
body that is worn. Consider what follows: Suits of 
clothes are changed, so that a man casting winter gar- 
ments of black and putting on summer dressing of 
white becomes, as to color, opposite as are the Antip- 
odes. Consider further, clothes of to-day are written 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 35 

over as paper on the morrow ; bodies of one decade are 
the flowers and the grass of another decade. 

Ceb. Do we not put men that are called dead into 
coffins and bury them in the earth ? 

Prot. But do you not know, Cebes, that as a serpent 
sloughs its skin yearly, so man casts his body every 
seven years? Funerals are no more present with the 
still than with the moving. Consider the emaciated. 
Do not men often enough part with half their bodies 
long before yielding the other half to an undertaker ? 
Is it not the case that a man changes his brain many 
times in a single year? Are not nails and hair in 
process of continuous coming and going? Daily, 
Cebes, are the buryings that are made by the hair- 
cutters and the nail-parers, yet, as to these, the buried 
remain unburied. An undertaker, dear Cebes, buries 
no differently from disease which emaciates or from 
a hair-cutter and a nail-parer. What is buried in any 
manner is only what is not longer needed. 

Ceb. Not needed by what, Protagoras ? Pray speak 
your reserve. What remains to need when body is 
back into Matter, and soul, if there happen to have 
been this association, is back into God ? for I under- 
stand both you and Socrates to hold, without any kind 
of reservation, that a man's body is one with Matter 
at large and his soul one with God ? 

Prot. The understanding is right, Cebes. The 



I36 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

grass at our feet and the roofs we rest under are no 
more themselves than us, nor are we in turn any more 
ourselves than them ; this as to body. As to our souls, 
the God is with us or not with us \ to be godless is to 
be soulless. 

Ceb. This I fully comprehend and acknowledge, 
but, with Simmias, in neither body nor soul do I find 
by the showing anything but the reverse of persistent 
conscious individual existence ; putting it, as has Em- 
pedocles, "a mingling and then a separation of the 
mingled." 

Prot. Empedocles adds, " which are called a birth 
and a death by ignorant mortals." What is that, 
Cebes, which the logicians call finding a thing by the 
process of induction ? 

Ceb. This is well understood in inference of cause 
as pointed to by effect. If a man sees a running stream 
he recognizes a source that he does not see. 

Prot. Then we are to esteem Cebes no logician, 
seeing his blindness as to a recognition through induc- 
tion ! But come, let us try for. the source of the running 
stream after other manner, for a thing not seen plainly 
is best not seen at all; at least a thing like this we 
consider. 

Ceb. You mean, Protagoras, by the source of the 
stream, a something besides what Socrates gives as ex- 
planatory of man's immortality ? 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 137 

Prat. Of the immortality of all men, godly and 
godless, of babies and cats as well. What say you, 
Cebes, have babies and cats souls ? 

Ceb. I require, Protagoras, out of my dulness to 
go back to the argument. Socrates defines soul as 
God manifesting in flesh. He demonstrates the pos- 
session as in no sense necessary to an organism, but as 
an attribute solely and wholly of election. Now, an 
election cannot be made save where ability exists to 
elect. Such ability to elect cannot reside with babe 
or cat. I decide in the negative : babies and cats are 
without souls. 

Prot. You decide rightly, Cebes, babies and cats 
have no souls ; this exactly in the way that babies and 
eyeless kittens are without mind. 

Ceb. Surely, Protagoras, we are not to say of a baby 
that it has no mind, seeing it to be born with a brain? 

Prot. What as to one born to the ownership of a 
piano? Is such a one a musician ? , . . You answer not. 
Is the possessor of a flute necessarily a flute-player? 
or are we to affirm of one who has the necessary in- 
struments that he is a surveyor ? 

Ceb. You imply, Protagoras, that as music is not to 
be received as identical with the means of making 
music, nor surveying with instruments of survey, 
mind is not to be accepted as identical with brain ? 

Prot. Yet we are compelled to accept it as being 
12* 



I38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

identical with something ; if with nothing else, then 
with itself. A question, Cebes : What is mind ? * 

Ceb. It would seem, really, to be a something not 
unlike what comes out of a flute, or out of surveying 
instruments. 

Prot. Are we to call it, then, result of instrumen- 
tation ? 

Ceb. As a flute is found 'to give forth indifferently 
all kinds of notes, according as its stops are handled, 
and as a brain gives out things equally indifferently on 
this same principle, it would seem that mind, like 
music, is simply and wholly a condition of instrumen- 
tation. 

Prot. Instrumentation, as is seen, recognizes three 
factors: first, one to instrumentate; second, an organ, 
or instrument on which to instrumentate; and, third, 
something to be instrumentated. One who instru- 
mentates must know the something to be instrumen- 
tated. Absence of knowledge of the something is neces- 
sarily absence of ability to instrumentate it. Music 
being understood to be one neither with a flute nor a 
flute-player, it is evidently a something apart from both. 

Ceb. The inference seems irrefutable. 

Prot. A flute-player must learn music before there 
is any play in him ? 

* See " Mind," p. 129, " Nineteenth Century Sense." 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 39 

Ceb. Undoubtedly. 

Prot. He must learn it for the reason that music 
is not a thing which is the flute-player himself, but 
some other thing ? 

Ceb. It shows itself to be so. 

Prot. What is it we are calling the thing on which 
a flute-player plays ? 

Ceb. A flute. 

Prot. It is, then, a flute by which is expressed a 
something that is not a flute? 

Ceb. This is evident enough. 

Prot. When a man talks of telephones and tele- 
graphs does he talk of things which are himself, or 
are these some other things? 

Ceb. Knowing that you do not mean them as unlike 
his body in that they are Matter, but that reference 
is to them as expressions, I am to call them some 
other things. 

Prot. But what is the talking about them to be 
called? To me it seems nothing different from flute- 
playing. 

Ceb. It seems the same, indeed. 

Prot. It is the same, only that here instrument is 
not a flute, but a brain, and what is instrumentated 
is not music, but ideas. Consider further an analogy. 
There is no music given out by a flute save that he 
who holds the instrument has music he may play; 



140 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

likewise ideas are to be played only when ideas are 
possessed. Now it is the case that ideas are one with 
experiences, so that one lacking as to experiences 
lacks as to ideas. What here are we to say of a baby 
utterly wanting as to experiences ? 

Ceb. Mind being one with instrumentation, and 
instrumentation, in turn, one with the possession of 
something to play, it follows plainly that a baby has 
no mind. 

Prot. But a baby has capability, Cebes, which is one 
with instrument, this capability lying with the instru- 
ment of mind, namely, the brain. Without brain there 
could be no giving forth of experiences, as without 
the flute there could be no rendering of flute-music. 

Ceb. Do you not commit yourself, Protagoras? 
Music, as we have just agreed, neither originates nor 
resides with a flute. 

Prot. Wonderful, wonderful, Cebes. You approach 
your revelation. See you nothing else? 

Ceb. Nothing, Protagoras, save that the argument 
seems about to crumble. 

Prot. Surely, Cebes, you must see. You are so 
close you must see ! 

Ceb. I see nothing but an overwhelming fallacy, 
namely, that the human brain, accepted by everybody, 
and from all time, to be the holder and container of 
things, is nothing of the kind, but is simply an in^ 



THE ETERNAL NOW. I4I 

strument dead and tuneless of itself as is a player's 
flute or a surveyor's theodolite. I am done, Protag- 
oras; the brain being not different from a flute, the 
question of individuality determines itself once and 
forever. The argument of the master leads aright, 
Matter back into Matter, Soul back into God. 

Prot. But see you nothing, Cebes, in understanding 
the oneness of Now with eternity? 

Ceb. Nothing, Protagoras, absolutely nothing ; that 
is, as any conscious immortality for babes or godless 
men is concerned, nor even for their contraries, any 
more than for cats. 

Prot. Do you think, Cebes, that you catch, in this 
illustration through mind, what is meant by a baby 
having no soul ? 

Ceb. One could hardly be dull enough for such a 
miss, Protagoras. You mean, repeating what I said, 
that as brain is for an office which is not with it until 
experiences are garnered, so, after like manner, the 
human possesses no God, or Soul, until it come to 
ability to elect and to take on this office; that in 
such ability a baby is necessarily wanting. However, 
seeing or not seeing, the thing is one. God and 
Matter are immortal, not men. 

Prot. And you see nothing yet, Cebes, notwith- 
standing brains play experiences and afterwards go into 
graves and rot ? 



142 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ETERNAL NOW. 

Ceb. Nothing at all, Protagoras. Rotting brains 
only make the matter worse. A storehouse gone to 
pieces, its contents are soon scattered. 

Prot. Nor is anything seen by you notwithstanding 
the recognized separability of flutes and players ? 

Ceb. I answer you no doubt stupidly, Protagoras, 
considering it implied that our conversation is being 
held in eternity and that selves who are talking know 
themselves. Yet a question remains. What is it 
that knows self, seeing that what talks is God on 
one side and Matter on the other ? 



I. 



" I is identical with Consciousness ; that is, with That which 
knows itself; it is identical with nothing else. • I am an I' was 
the impulsive and enthused exclamation of Jean Paul Richter, 
as, on an occasion, standing in the door-way of the paternal house, 
the internal vision rushed upon him, as he describes it, * like a 
flash remaining ever after luminously persistent.' ' For the first 
time,' he says, ' I had seen itself, and forever.' 

" I is not the Creative power, else would consciousness of ful- 
ness or completeness reside with it. Ego recognizes itself as no 
designer of environments incomprehensible to itself. Ego per- 
ceives that it can say nothing of things as to what their reality may 
be, for the reason that it knows nothing of things apart from the 
manner in which things present themselves to Consciousness. All 
that it can say, or possibly know, is that a Thing is to Its use what 
to the sense that uses It It seems to be." * 

* See " Nineteenth Century Sense." 



'43 



144 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 



" MAN says, ■ I see,' ' I feel,' ' I taste,' ' I smell,' ' I hear.' The 
man expresses himself correctly. Certainly it is not a simple lens 
called the eye that sees. A man never thinks that it is his spectacles 
that look. What sees is the Self, the I. Optical apparatus, whether 
the ordinary organ of sight, a set of prepared glasses, or what else in 
the line of vision, are media of communication ; nothing different, 
nothing else. The means of smell, but not smell itself, lie with a col- 
lection of delicate strings. Hearing is by means of a semi-pulpy 
cord. Touch is accomplished through the instrumentality of white, 
hard strings several feet, many of them, in length. When, on the 
contrary, a man says, ' I am heated,' ' I am cold,' ' I am hungry,' ' I 
am famished,' he speaks incorrectly, as here are indicated conditions 
of the environment and not any state or need of the Ego."* 

Protagoras. Was it you, Simmias, that spake ? 

Cebes. It was I, Protagoras. 

Prot. Meaning by I what, Cebes, Soul or body? 

Ceb. By the gods, Protagoras, your question is the 
revelation. Should I reply Soul, there would be im- 
plied the God had answered. Should I, on the other 
hand, say body, Matter must have spoken. 

Prot. Why not, one or the other, soul or body ? 

Ceb. Considering that godless alike with godly are 
possessed of speech, the first premise carries its own 

* See "Nineteenth Century Sense." 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 145 

refutation, and, recognizing the universality of Matter, 
it would have been as much a tree or an ox or a running 
stream that spake as Cebes. Strange that such percep- 
tion comes to me for the first time. 

Prot. If you have not caught the revelation, Cebes, 
you are preparing for it. Let us talk on. Heed ! 
If there were no darkness there would be no reason for 
the candle ; just as if there were no ignorance there 
would be no occasion for enlightenment. What has 
gone before is to be found not irrelevant to what comes 
after. Things are not to be taken for granted, but are 
to be inquired into ; neither in our inquiries are we 
to overlook paradoxes and paradigms which seem 
to abound everywhere. 

Ceb. Hist, Protagoras! What do you call a para- 
digm? 

Prot. You ask not out of place, Cebes. It was one 
of most extraordinary repute who maintained that 
Common sense is little better than no sense ; a declara- 
tion, as you see, agreeing with our conclusion that 
" things are not what they seem to be." A paradigm 
is the inside of a thing turned outside ; in other words, 
it is understanding a thing in the light of Educated 
rather than of Common sense. 

Ceb. Is it Educated sense, Protagoras, on which a 
man is to depend for complete enlightenment ? 

Prot. No more than a man is to expect to see around 
g k 13 



I46 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

a globe having one of his eyes at the zenith and the 
other at the nadir. To see around a circle demands 
eyes looking from four places, namely, top, bottom, and 
the two horizons, and these eyes, as comprehension of 
the universal is concerned, are found to lie with four 
manners of learning, these being Common Sense, 
Educated Sense, Egoistic Sense, and Soul Sense. 

Ceb. Meaning by these what, Protagoras ? 

Prot. As to the last-named, Cebes, it is not here 
worth while further to consider it, seeing it to be one 
with the fountain of knowledge, namely, God, as found 
resident with man ; nobody knows of the God, save 
indirectly, but as the God is of his composition. The 
second, Egoistic sense, is exampled in the Sensitives; 
meaning, by these, poets, musicians, architects, and 
all others who see and hear what is neither seen nor 
heard by the masses. The third is understanding 
as lying with analysis and synthesis ; this relates 
with scholarship and schools. The fourth applies 
to employment of things as things show to the 
senses that use them ; Common sense is entirely brute 
sense. Heed the four, Cebes, for as a man lacks of 
either so is his view restricted and his understanding 
imperfect. 

Ceb. What you name Egoistic sense, Protagoras, 
is called by Socrates genius. He says all men are as 
looking-glasses, which reflect what falls against them, 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 147 

but that the masses smear, while, on the contrary, the 
Sensitives define. Is this not what you mean? 

Prot. It is well put. Ill-silvered glasses show things 
in smeared form; on the contrary, a perfect glass 
shows things as they are. Heed, however, a paradigm, 
Cebes, the object of the telling being to show the 
nothingness of a Common sense judgment. Hippoc- 
rates the Younger, who, as you know, is versed in the 
art of medicine, was resting upon the steps of the tem- 
ple of Mercury when Philippides came up and pro- 
pounded the following. "A man told me," he said, 
"that sitting upon a half-rotted log in his pasture- 
field just at the full of the moon he was startled in be- 
holding a form rise with solemn slowness from the earth 
immediately at his feet. ' Overcome, not with fear, but 
with astonishment,' he continued, 'I sat watching the 
materialization, for such undoubtedly it was, oblivious 
of time, not knowing whether it was minutes or hours 
I looked, until at length the ghost, or whatever it is to 
be named, attained to full stature. Feeling that here 
was deception of the sense of sight, I reached forth 
with intent of disproving or proving through touch. 
It was indeed body and not phantom. No flesh that I 
had ever handled was more real. The Being, balanced 
on one leg, as seen so frequently with birds, changed 
not in presence of my riveted gaze, but stood immova- 
ble and unblinking. The morning calling me to town, 



148 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

I got up and moved away, not, however, unaccompa- 
nied by the Materialization, which followed closely, 
even pressing against my person. Arrived home the 
Presence was still at my back, and it continued to 
attend me several days, never leaving me in my 
comings and goings for a single moment. At length 
it disappeared, the manner of its going being not less 
wonderful than that of its appearing.' " 

Philippides, telling me the story, said that Hippoc- 
rates volunteered without hesitation to use the privi- 
lege of his caste to have the teller chained as a lunatic. 

"But I answered," said Philippides, "assuring him 
that the man was commonly esteemed one of the 
worthiest and not least cultivated of the citizens." 

"Cultivated or not cultivated," replied Hippoc- 
rates, "he is crazy." 

" He is a professor," returned Philippides. 

Then quoth Hippocrates, " The college must be a 
mad -house." 

"The man is myself," said Philippides. 

"Ah," replied Hippocrates, "a sophism, revamped 
from Protagoras !" 

"Truly nothing of the kind," answered Philippides. 
"The occurrence is true even as to the days which 
the Being went with me about the streets." 

Philippides left his paradigm with Hippocrates, 
thinking that, as a physician, he would soon unriddle 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 49 

it. What say you, Cebes and Simmias? No doubt 
you have solved the story even before the telling of it 
is closed ? 

Simmias. By the gods, Protagoras, I must think with 
Hippocrates, that your old student had taken leave of 
his wits ! 

Prot. But you, Cebes, surely you will not so fault 
the deep-seeing Philippides? Better still, no doubt 
you perceive that paradigm is here no paradigm at all, 
but the recital simply of an every-day event? 

Ceb. In truth, Protagoras, I incline to think that 
the afternoon had been spent with Alcibiades at the 
table, and that a slave had carried Philippides to his 
pasture-lot with view to retiracy and air. 

Prot. I must, then, of myself turn the inside of the 
subject outside. What Philippides saw was a rapid- 
growing mushroom. Watching the plant the few short 
hours necessary to development, he at length broke its 
single leg, put it into a back pocket of his coat, and 
carried it to town behind him. The vegetable being 
cooked he ate it, thus making it temporarily part of 
his body, and so accompanied by it in his comings 
and goings, until in the course of nature its place in 
his system was taken by other and fresher material. 

Sim. It is I, Protagoras, who have not yet come to 
wit, and not Philippides who has lost it ! 

Ceb. For myself, Protagoras, I feel prepared by the 
13* 



ISO THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

paradigm for the something that I am sure is back 
of it. 

Prot. Mushrooms, Cebes, are not found everywhere ; 
why? 

Ceb. Shall I answer, Protagoras, that they are not 
found in the place of oak-trees, for the reason that an 
oak-seed and not a mushroom spawn was in the place ? 

Prot. It would not be easy to make better reply. 
But you do not mean to say, Cebes, that an acorn is 
one with an oak-tree? 

Ceb. Surely not so, Protagoras, for the one is a 
small-sized kernel, the other a towering giant. 

Prot. But the giant, Cebes ! You fail not to see 
that it is resultant of a gradual accretion which forms 
about the seed ? Hist ! What is it but Matter re- 
sponding to a call for body ? It comes and at length it 
goes. Heed ! It comes and goes to and from a some- 
thing. Is not this the history? Is it not the same as 
to a mushroom? Is the thing different as to man? 
See you anything yet ? 

Socrates. I beg you, Protagoras, suffer no interrup- 
tions, but go on and speak in fulness what you have 
to tell. Cebes got out of eternity almost as quickly 
as he got into it. I will assume that it is not thus 
with the rest of us, at least I will answer fully for 
myself, for you have this hour shown a Universal 
for the first time beheld by me. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. I 5 I 

Prot. A question, Socrates ! What say you, Is a 
man concerned to know what is beyond his capability 
of knowing ? 

Soc. On the contrary, so evidently not, that out of 
such concern, which unnecessarily he takes on himself, 
he does nothing but dispute without coming to con- 
clusions. Answer me in turn, worthy Protagoras, 
for I perceive you to be filled with a word seeking 
birth. What is it that Matter comes to and goes from 
in the case of men ? 

Prot. The centuries, and the disputations, Socrates, 
that have come and gone, have given me a word that 
I marvel you catch not, indeed that you did not catch 
long ago, seeing that it confusedly mingled with your 
discourses on Soul in the Athenian's days. We are not 
to say that Matter comes to and goes from God, for the 
God is bodiless. Saying this, we may not say that 
Matter comes to and goes from Soul, for soul is 
identical with God. Matter, then, coming to man, 
comes to Something not itself and not God. 

Soc. You propose a revelation indeed ! 

Prot. There is a third Entity, Socrates : its name 
is I. 

Soc. By the gods, Protagoras, while I have known 
myself from curls to bald crown, myself according to 
such proposition is a new person to become acquainted 
with. In saying that I is an Entity do you mean that 



152 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

a man is a thing wholly in himself separate and dis- 
tinct from Matter and God ? 

Prot. Why, Socrates, if the boldness may be con- 
doned, this seems to me wholly what was implied by 
you in that reply to Crito about burying you as he 
pleased if only he could catch you. Surely it was not 
the God he was to catch, while as to body the chance 
of its getting away was lost when you refused to award 
yourself to exile. 

Soc. Protagoras, I am to confess this unthought of 
before after such manner. To me the God ever has 
been, and is, the All. The wave and the sea is an 
illustration that covers Simple and phenomenon alike. 
Surely nothing better is to be desired than to be one 
with God. 

Prot. But something is to be left, Socrates, for such 
as cannot, or do not desire to, become one with the 
God; for the babies and cats and soulless men, for 
example. 

Soc. Hist, Protagoras ! it opens that your revelation 
makes everything with an I immortal ! 

Prot. In such respect it puts the caterpillar on a 
plane with the God-man ; babies and cats and soulless 
men. on the same plane. 

Ceb. It is the teaching of Socrates, Protagoras, that 
Consciousness, which I take to be akin with I, as pro- 
pounded by you, is alone some kind of phenomenon 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 53 

living with the brain, and that its disappearance is 
synchronous with the breaking up of its dwelling-place. 

Prot. The- thing is just the other way. Socrates 
will not, I think, give precedence any longer to brain 
unless prepared to give like precedence to a flute ; even 
though Cebes sees nothing in the distinction. 

Soc. In truth, Protagoras, I am open to conviction 
if only you can show us where your man comes from. 

Prot. Just where God comes from, Socrates. Here 
is, not my revelation, but a revolution. Man is alone 
concerned to know, as we have agreed, what is not 
beyond his capability of knowing. I leave all con- 
fusion as to past and future in finding these to be one 
with a Now that is eternal. In this Now I first dis- 
cover Myself: Myself as I and not any other I. 
Associated with my I, but not it, by reason of being 
a constant flux in relation with it, I find Matter. 
Outside of I and Matter I find with myself intuitive 
recognition of God ; associated with which, in turn, 
is a conviction equally intuitive that the office of a 
created thing is existent in the purpose of its creator, 
and nowhere else, and that, so far as man is concerned, 
this office is one with soul.* Here is my premise. 
What I cannot know is of no concern to me to know. 
I know nothing as to origin either of God, Matter, or 

* See "Nineteenth Century Sense." 



154 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Man. My whole concern is to deal with things simply 
as I find them. You are agreed, Socrates, that we 
know no more about origin than on the first asking 
of his question by Thales three thousand years ago. 

Soc. It is not easy to disagree with you, Protagoras, 
in accepting Now as the only possible practical be- 
ginning of an individual man's acquaintance with 
himself. Certainly for a thing to act or think before 
knowing itself is impossible, nor is it more possible 
that acting or thinking can be carried where self-con- 
sciousness does not extend. 

Prot. Then it shows to you, as to me, Socrates, that 
Now is the whole concern of man ? 

Soc. It is quite a new way to put it, Protagoras, but 
I agree with you. 

Prot. Accept, worthy master, that in agreeing to 
this we are forever rid of confusions. Cebes and 
Simmias do not, however, as I fear, quite comprehend. 
Suffer me to lay together and to cement the founda- 
tion of what I will call our New Philosophy. 

Ceb. A word, Protagoras. In his talk Socrates 
quoted approvingly lines spoken by Bharata to the 
effect that it is ignorance alone which enables Maya 
to impress the mind with sense of individuality. 
"Soul," he said, "is one, uniform, exempt from 
birth, omnipresent, undecaying, mode of true knowl- 
edge, disassociated with unrealities, that so soon as 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 155 

ignorance is dispelled it is known that severalty exists 
not, and that there is nothing but one individual 
whole." 

ProL Ah ! Cebes, Cebes ! Knowing nothing of 
Bharata I yet know him to have been holy. Bharata 
had lost Ego in Soul, as, after no dissimilar manner, 
Epictetus had lost Matter in Ego. Loss of Self in 
God is one with attainment of invulnerability. Not 
to aim to lose Self in Soul is to deny chance of 
getting above animal existence. What Bharata meant 
by "ignorance dispelled" was, and is, that lower 
denies itself in higher as higher becomes known to it. 
Where Ego moves the other way it identifies itself 
sooner or later with bulls or tadpoles. Do you catch 
the meaning? 

Ceb. Not exactly. 

Prot. Listen to a pure inspiration given in the book 
before quoted : * 

"After the manner of a dream was beheld an ob- 
long square showing three separated sprays of lilies. 
As the Dreamer looked wonderingly at the symbol, 
seeing no meaning in it, explanation projected itself 
as a Jack might spring from its box. The word was 
1 Hypostases/ and the association implied that the 
three separate sprays, or groups, stood for the three 

* See " Nineteenth Century Sense." 



I56 PHILOSOPHY OF THE ETERNAL NOW. 

parts of which a man is constituted, namely, Matter, 
Ego, Soul; that it is left with men which they will 
most cultivate, and thus become most like unto, — that 
is, whether they will be Material, Selfish, or Godly. 

" In his dream the Dreamer fixed his gaze earnestly 
— it may have been by accident, or it may have been 
out of intuition — on the spray representing Soul. As 
he continued to look, this developed little by little 
into a fulness of bloom which transformed the flower 
into a size and whiteness such as he had never before 
beheld. The other two sprays withered and shrunk 
away correspondingly. . . . 

" When the morning came the Dreamer wrote down 
that, in a dream, he had learned the meaning of 
differences which characterize men, and as well that 
he had been given the secret of creating differences." 

Ceb. I comprehend fully, Protagoras, and see 
clearly, what Socrates has otherwise expressed, that a 
man's self is creator alike of Heaven and Hell. 

Prot. A man's whole world, Cebes, is nothing 
different from what himself is. 



KNOWLEDGE OF SELF 

AND 

RELATION WITH THE UNIVERSAL. 



" An individuality, called a man, finds itself standing in the 
midst of a great universe. Under his feet is ground. Over his 
head is sky. The first is covered with growing things and with 
creeping and walking things. The other shows ether reaching to 
infinity. Suns countless, and planets in number not to be reck- 
oned, are before him. Immensity confronts and confounds 
him."* 

* " Nineteenth Century Sense." 



'57 



I5# THE PHILOSOPHY OF 



KNOWLEDGE OF SELF 

AND 

RELATION WITH THE UNIVERSAL. 



Protagoras. Beginning of knowledge, dear Cebes 
and Simmias, is, as I am sure the master will agree, with 
appreciation of hypostases. By hypostases is meant 
composition. The hypostases of a house, to make sim- 
plest example, are stone, brick, iron, steel, brass, wood, 
etc. The hypostases of the steam-engines of these 
moderns are iron, steel, brass, wood, etc. To under- 
stand a house or a machine one must have knowledge 
of what enters into its composition. 

The hypostases of man introduce us to the Entities, 
of which, as understood, there are three. Now, the 
reason for asserting a thing to be an Entity lies with 
two directions of proof, the first of which is that it is 
a perception of pure intuition ; everybody, the untaught 
alike with the taught, recognizing it, consciously or 
unconsciously, by name or without name, as a Simple, 
that is, as a thing which is itself and no other thing ; 
the second is the impossibility of resolving an Entity 
through any process of human experience or learning 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 59 

into anything but itself. The three Entities, or Sim- 
ples, to rename them, are God, Ego, Matter. Heed, 
Cebes and Simmias ! phenomena lead to That out of 
which phenomena come. All the things of the world, 
the mingled alike with the separated, are never any- 
thing else but one of these three. 

Simmias. If it be not presuming, Protagoras, it seems 
to me the case that the argument of the master concern- 
ing the resolving of all elements into one might here 
again be applied, and that it would be no unjust thing 
to decide that there is but one Entity, which, for lack 
of a better name, might be called Origin. Certainly 
it accords with what you name "pure intuition" to 
accept that there was a time when man was not, and 
we all seem agreed that there was a time when the 
earth was without form, and void, and as to who 
God is, and whence, nobody pretends to have an opin- 
ion. To say that your three Entities are phenomena 
arising out of, or existing in, the Origin of things, goes 
to a beyond that leaves no other possible beyond. 

Prof. You say well, Simmias, forgetting, however, 
the master's reply to the question as to " whether or 
not it concerns a man to know what is beyond his capa- 
bility of knowing." Unless I misquote, the answer was 
as follows : " So evidently not, that out of such concern, 
which unnecessarily he takes on himself, he does noth- 
ing but dispute without coming to conclusions." 



l6o THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Sim. You give, certainly, the sense of his words. 

Prot. You have forgotten something more, Simmias, 
namely, " that a thing is, to the sense that uses it, what 
to the sense it seems to be ; that it is never anything 
else." 

Sim. I am to understand that the origin of things 
in no way concerns us, and that relation with them 
is simply and wholly as they are found by us ? 

Prot Just, Simmias, as a shoemaker deals with 
leather which he makes into shoes. Think you that 
shoes would be better sewed by reason of the sewer 
bothering himself and losing time over a question of 
which was first, the goat whose skin furnishes the up- 
pers, or the bullock whose hide supplies the soles he 
works at? 

Cebes. For myself I am quite prepared to go on, as 
from Athens to Philadelphia examples line the road of 
philosophers whose systems are as wrecks by reason of 
assuming things as much wanting in concern to them 
as in possibility of exposition. I pronounce myself 
your disciple, Protagoras. The premise is, as I now un- 
derstand it, that as man finds and knows, and as alone 
he can find and know, three things constitute the uni- 
versal, the three things constituting as well himself, 
himself thus one with the universal ? 

Echecrates. I think, Protagoras, that in a bottle 
somewhere about me is an illustration of this three in 



THE ETERNAL NOW. l6l 

one. See ; here it is : the string it contains is a nerve. 
What say you, Cebes, is this cord a single strand ? 

Ceb. Undeniably, as it appears to me. 

Ech. Myself dissected it out of a human neck, find- 
ing three strands coming from three different nerves to 
form it by their union. Continuing the tracing of this 
common cord, I beheld it, after running singly for a 
short distance, divide into three strands, which striking 
me as having correspondence as to entrance and exit 
led to a more refined examination, which, as here is 
to be shown, discovers the three strands not to mingle, 
but to keep, each to itself, the line, all the time seeming, 
to the common eye, as of homogeneous construction. 

Prot. The illustration is pertinent. God, Ego, and 
Matter mingle yet are never one. But let us on. 
First, however, what say you, Simmias? Is there a 
weak place here in our system, or does it show to you 
that a man's concern extends where he is without 
capability to extend ? 

Sim. You mean that origin lies without the pale of 
his concern, and that as to where God, himself, or 
Matter comes from is none of his business ? 

Prot. You have it exactly ; as though you should say 
of an egg that its quality and meaning are known, 
while to learn which was first, egg or chicken, proves 
an impossibility. 

Sim. And I must certainly recognize, Protagoras, 
h 14* 



1 62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

that having the egg, and understanding the full circle 
of its use, one would cudgel his brain as vainly as use- 
lessly in vexing himself with a question that is equally 
without better or worse to him. 

Prot. We will, then, go forward. When we say that 
the hypostasis of a house or a machine lies with mate- 
rial as named, we appreciate that it lies with a single 
thing, namely, Matter. Stone, brick, wood, iron, 
brass, marble, glass, steel, and similar things, are, all 
of them, but a single thing, namely, Matter. What 
differs is expression. Stone, brick, steel, brass, are 
phenomena. What the wave spoken of is to the sea 
and the sea is to the wave, that a piece of brass is to 
Matter and Matter is to a piece of brass. Houses and 
machines are simple, not compound; they consist of 
but one of the three things making up the universal. 

Man is tripartite. At least his capability is tripar- 
tite. His meaning is, first and primarily, with an Ego, 
or Self-consciousness, that never confounds itself with 
anybody or anything else. This Ego, I, Self-conscious- 
ness, is the man, and nothing else is him, save as an else 
or as elses are collateral ; that is to say, as they relate 
with him, not as necessities of his existence, but as in- 
cidental or elective ; muscles and bones are incidental, 
soul is elective. Muscles and bones may go into a 
coffin, Ego ever remains outside of it. Soul may never 
have united with a man, but his I is not less existent 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 63 

and persistent by reason of the absence. The I takes 
on and throws off environment ; itself necessarily an 
immortal by reason that it is a Simple. 

Ceb. I fear, Protagoras, that I am not clear as to what 
is meant by a Simple. 

Prot. A Simple, Cebes, is a thing, as I think already 
has been explained, that is an existence in itself and 
not in any other thing. The selfhood of a man is to 
be esteemed by him as much individual as is the self- 
hood of the God. 

Ceb. But, Protagoras, there are many men : how do 
you reconcile this with a Simple? God is one and 
Matter is one. With these is no confusion. Truly, 
unless you assert that it is man, and not men, that is a 
simple, the coming out turns to a going in. 

Prot. But you forget, Cebes ; the judgment is with 
Self as Self knows Self. It is man, and not men. 
Cebes is not Simmias, nor is Simmias Cebes. It lies 
somewhat as follows. Ego is a circle. Into and from 
this circle come and go the incident, Matter, and the 
elective, Soul. Self is not less self by reason of lack 
of soul, nor is it wanting by reason of absence of tan 
gible body. 

Ceb. Why do you use the word tangible, Protagoras ? 

Prot. Consider a problem, Cebes ! There is no such 
thing as a vacuum in nature, yet there is emptiness. 
What say you, is emptiness real or only seeming ? 



164 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Ceb. If there be no vacuum, Protagoras, emptiness 
must be alone seeming. 

Prot. This is what I mean by tangible. Matter, 
which is body, is one with the translucency of a jelly- 
fish and the transparency of flawless glass not less than 
with the opacity of tree-trunks and the blackness of 
stone-coal. Ego, when in flesh, is in an opaque body ; 
when it would freely and unrestrainedly wander, as in 
dreams, or in the so-called death, its body is of that 
lighter aspect of Matter which occupies the vacuum. 

Ceb. Do you really mean to suggest likeness between 
the death and the dream state?* 

Prot. I esteem proof of the oneness, as this lies 
with the hypostases, to be absolute. For myself, when 
I die, as you persist in naming a state one with dream- 
ing, I would have put on the tombstone — 

Having fallen asleep, he has wandered off in his dream- 
body, leaving the one that here lies buried. 



* Consciousness is not one with brain, as music is not one with flute. 
But music is not active separated from instrument, nor is consciousness 
active separated from Matter. The body of the dream state is one 
with Astral, and Astral is one with celestial body ; otherwise ex- 
pressed, body, as related with Ego in its freer state, as when wander- 
ing in the dream condition, or when become celestial, is Matter 
approached to its real condition, which condition is unseeable by 
the ordinary organ of sight To comprehend the hypostases is to 
know without doubt that there is terrestrial body and that there is 
celestial body. It is appreciated that pure Matter is unseeable. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 65 

But to go on with the hypostases. Brute beasts are 
dual. Lions, tigers, camels, crocodiles, bats, lizards, 
worms, bugs, and all similar things are dual ; that is, 
they have to the uses of the Ego the incident Matter ; 
their lack is soul. Full, keen, and decided apprecia- 
tion of hypostases, of what it means, and of what it 
entails, is both alpha and omega of human life. Here 
is beginning. Here is that non-ending termed eternity. 
It is for a man to understand what he is, and what his 
purposes and meaning are, in knowing what his compo- 
sition is. Houses and machines being Matter wholly, 
their purpose and intention relate solely with Matter. 
Dual things have dual purpose. Tripartite things have 
threefold purpose. A man, if he fulfil his meaning, 
plays his part in recognition of the facts that he has a 
Matter-composed body to look after and provide for, 
that he has an Individuality to educate and elevate, 
and that he has, as summum bonum, or highest meaning, 
the office of Soul-carrier, which, as we understand, is 
almoner to the God. 

Ceb. It requires little extent of cultivated sense to 
recognize that duty lies with performance of function : 
melons are to be expected from melon-seed ; lard 
and meat are the circle of the office of swine. The 
capability of man is all-sufficient direction for work 
pertaining to be done by him.* 

* See " Nineteenth Century Sense." 



1 66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Prot. When human capability analyzes down to the 
indivisible, the terminations, start as a man will, are in 
one of three directions, which directions are in the 
simples so frequently named, — i.e., God, Ego, Matter. 

Sim. Pardon the interruption, Protagoras, but it just 
comes to me to perceive that if Ego and not soul be 
the persistent individuality, then necessarily beasts alike 
with all men are immortal. How say you, Socrates? 
for this is different from what you teach. 

Socrates. Your pupil has been asleep, Protagoras. 
The premises granted, Simmias, the conclusion is cor- 
rect. 

Prot. Let it go, Socrates. Simmias will no doubt 
feel later what is never to be seen : Universal becomes 
God to the exceptional few only.* 

The Entities, that is, the three things named, are in- 
tangibles. Continents and oceans, and the things of 
continents and oceans, are Matter, but Matter, apart 
from its phenomenal expressions, is not seeable, smell- 
able, tasteable, or touchable ; electricity is seeable only 
when it lightens. Ego is the selfhood of man ; self- 
hood shows to the common senses through environment 
alone. God is " Creative Power," and is everywhere; 
but^here.what is omnipresent and mightiest shows, di- 
rectly, neither movement nor sign. 

* See Death of Elvira in " Hours with John Darby." 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 67 

Entities are separable, and not at all one another. 
Matter constitutes the whole of the body of a man ; it 
is in no sense either Ego or Soul. Ego is itself, and 
not Matter nor God. Soul is God ; it is no more Ego 
nor Matter than Time-of-day is the mainspring or the 
minute-hand of a watch. Mainspring and minute- 
hand are necessities to the running of a watch as a 
watch, Time-of-day is not. Ego and Matter are neces- 
sities to the functions of man as an animal, Soul is not. 

The hypostases, or make-up, of a brute being duality, 
which duality consists of Ego and Matter, it follows 
that man is brute unless possessed of the third Entity. 
This third Entity not being any more necessary for the 
running of a man than is Time-of-day for the running 
of a watch, it follows that man is not different from a 
brute simply by reason of not going on all-fours. 

Knowledge of Self is recognition of the universal 
for the reason that there is nothing in the universal 
that is not in Self; hence to know self is to know all 
there is to know. 

Ceb. Do you mean by this last that in his recognition 
of the Entities man knows all there is to know, these 
constituting all there is of the universal? or do you 
mean that in man's self is the universal? 

Prot. Here, Cebes, is another aspect of our revolu- 
tion. I mean either or both. Recall you now the 
Realistic school of philosophers, and, in turn, the 



1 68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Idealists. As you must recognize, there can be but two 
general schools, namely, one that holds the world to 
exist outside of man, the other maintaining it to be in- 
side of him. Each school adduces arguments to its sup- 
port. The Idealists show without difficulty that the 
world is always subjective and never objective ; that it 
is the Ego which perceives, and takes hold of, and 
creates. They say, truly, that if there be such a thing 
as Matter nobody knows what it is. The Realists, on 
the contrary, maintain a real existence for things. A 
hammer with which a realist pounds a nail is Matter 
and not idea. 

Ceb. But a phenomenon, Protagoras, implies a con- 
dition or substance back of it and out of which it 
arises ? 

Prot. An idealist is his own condition and substance ; 
all that arises or sinks is nothing else than a conception 
or idea existing with himself: to make coarse example, 
he quotes you a tree as standing to sight not at all 
across a field where the realist affirms it to be, but at 
the bottom of a looker's own eye. 

Ceb. But is he not caught just here, Protagoras, in 
his own trap, in admitting that it is his eye that sees ? 

Prot. He does not admit this, but uses the illustra- 
tion simply as appeal to the crudeness of the realist. 
He denies eyes quite as fully as he does trees, placing 
perception, as well as creation, with the Ego. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 69 

Ceb. We seem here in a general sense to approach 
the teaching of the master where he affirms and 
demonstrates man to be his own heaven and hell 
maker. 

Prot. Whist, Cebes ! What difference is it as to 
where a tree is? or what difference as to what sees, 
is shaded or warmed? correspondence with require- 
ment certainly exists, and this truly is the sum and 
substance of relation. Our new philosophy finds no 
hesitation in agreeing alike with idealist and realist. 

Ech. Would it not be well for Cebes and the rest 
of us, Protagoras, that we fix comfortably these bodies 
of ours, or these no-bodies, as the case may be, while 
you discourse in uninterrupted fashion about the doc- 
trines of which you hint ? for of a truth it is not easy 
to follow, out of reason of lack as to understanding of 
what it is exactly that your philosophers mean. 

Prot. The master would have been the better one 
to ask, Echecrates; but, that he may not be aroused 
from a sweet slumber into which I perceive him to have 
fallen, we may move a little away so as not to dis- 
turb him, and if objection be not made by the others, 
and they dispose to move with us rather than sleep, our 
talk may for a little time be directed to this about 
which you inquire. 



'5 



FROM COMPLEXITY TO SIMPLICITY. 



" As philosophy means knowledge, and as knowledge is the 
beautiful and desirable thing of the world, so the temptation is 
great to reach here and there, and to wander hither and thither, 
as one pursues the way of the mountain. But to wander is to in- 
cur danger of becoming lost, which accident has happened to a 
multitude of wanderers, and will surely happen to every one who 
carries not with him an unerring compass." * 

Philosophy has as its intention the affording of purpose to life. 

*See " Nineteenth Century Sense." 



171 



172 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 



FROM COMPLEXITY TO SIMPLICITY. 



Protagoras. Philosophy, Echecrates, has as its in- 
tention the affording of purpose to life. To be pos- 
sessed of purpose implies necessarily understanding 
of object. Understanding of object is not possibly 
elsewhere than with appreciation of instrument. Man 
is instrument. The study of man is man. Philosophy 
and man are identical. 

We who are here from Athens, two thousand years 
after, have nothing to our advantage over students 
of the lore we bring out of these years. A thousand 
years are as a day, and a day is as a thousand years. 
To scan the earth appears at hasty view a wide matter, 
but when considered is seen to be a narrow matter. 
To see a cupful of water is to see an oceanful. A par- 
ticle of ground in one continent is not of difference 
with all the particles in the other continents. A single 
tree corresponds after general manner with all trees. 
A blade of grass is the type of leaves at large. 

Consider, with view to appreciation, another para- 
digm. Hippocrates, whose learning runs always away 
from principles, arguing for the existence of a multi- 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 73 

tude of diseases as afflicting men, was combated by 
Philippides, who suggested there could be only one, 
whereupon the physician sneeringly asked the philoso- 
pher if he had been so shut up with the healthy as not 
to have heard of headache as well as heartache. " And 
pray," queried Philippides, " what is it you call head- 
ache and heartache?" In reply Hippocrates answered 
that "by headache is meant pain in the head, while by 
heartache is implied pain in the heart." "We are to 
say too," returned Philippides, " that pain in a lung is 
lungache, and pain in a liver is liverache, and pain in 
a foot is footache, and so on through all the parts of 
the body?" Hippocrates, unable to conceal his con- 
tempt, replied that recognition was of the diseases 
Cephalalgia and Cardialgia and Pneumonalgia and 
Hepatalgia and Podalgia. Whereupon again Philip- 
pides, noticing that these great words had a common 
ending, asked Hippocrates if the termination implied 
anything special ; and on being informed that pain was 
implied, further asked if the prefixes implied anything 
special ; and on being here replied to that they were 
repetition, in other language, of the words that had 
been used, namely, head, heart, lung, and foot, Philip- 
pides assumed that, unless pain be many and not one, 
the disease was Algia and not Cephal or Cardia or 
Pneumon or Hepata or Pod, it showing that the pre- 
fixes expressed simply and alone locality, or seat of 
15* 



174 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

pain, and not any cause in which the suffering 
exists.* 

Hippocrates, having no ready answer, was about to 
turn on his heel, when Philippides begged he would 
define what is meant by the term Ease. "It is not," 
surlily replied the physician, " what is meant by pain." 
" It is to be esteemed, then," gently responded Philip- 
pides, "as the opposite to pain?" " Ycu have it, no 
doubt, out of experience," said Hippocrates. Philip- 
pides referring to his memory recalled that the Latins, 
when they would reverse the meaning of a term, em- 
ployed the particle " dis," whereupon he again queried 
the physician, asking if there is a condition the oppo- 
site to ease. "We will answer," said the surly Hip- 
pocrates, "that fools and wise men alike know this." 
"Surely, then, it must be the case," replied the philoso- 
pher, " that erudition has found some word to express 
such condition, as its contrary is named in the word 
Ease. What, Hippocrates," he asked, "is meant by 
disability as applied to one disabled, or disingenuous as 
used for one who is not ingenuous, or disordered to one 
who is not well ordered, or dislodged to one who is not 
lodged, or disloyal to one not loyal?" Hippocrates 
answered without hesitation that all these were exam- 



* Ke<f>a\rj, the head, KapSCa, the heart, irvevfuav, the lung, Jfirap, the 
liver, 7rov?, a foot, — aAyos, pain. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1/5 

pies of the converse, implying that a person is not able, 
or ingenuous, or well ordered, or lodged, or loyal. " It 
seems, then, to be the case," said Philippides, "that 
a common word expresses all the conditions named 
while itself is none of them?" "You say correctly," 
responded Hippocrates. "Are we to say, then, of the 
first portion of the word disease, namely, dis," asked 
Philippides, "that it is other than a converse? and if 
not other, does it imply else than absence of ease?" 
"Certainly it implies alone absence of ease," replied 
the physician. " Concerning ease," asked Philippides, 
" is this other than absence of pain ?" " It is assuredly 
absence of pain," admitted Hippocrates. " Pain, or 
anything of similar meaning, being absent from a per- 
son," asked Philippides, "we are to say that such a 
one is not sick?" " Of course such a one is not sick," 
said the physician. "Then ease," queried Philippides, 
"is the state of not being sick?" "It is the state 
of not being sick," reluctantly admitted Hippocrates. 
"How, then," asked Philippides, "are there many 
states of not being sick, or only one?" The physician 
would not answer. "A man being sick," said Philip- 
pides, " is so, as you leave us to understand, simply by 
reason of not being well, or, using the other word, not 
at ease, a state expressed by the little conversing parti- 
cle dis, which, conjoined with the suffix, yields the 
word dis-ease. How say you, Hippocrates, is there 



1/6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

more than one Dis and more than one Ease?" Hip- 
pocrates, with lofty disdain, replied that disease stood 
for a variety of causes. " As many as you please," re- 
torted Philippides; "but unless the plural of the pro- 
fession is better defined than is its singular, the show 
of treatment will be apt to prove worse than the 
grammar." 

Hippocrates, controlling an anger that showed in his 
eye, asked Philippides if he would dispense with the use 
of the term disease. "Not so," replied the philoso- 
pher. " No more expressive one could be coined ; fault 
is alone with misuse. To analyze the word is, as it 
seems to me, to secure measure of its employment. All 
sick persons are in a common condition of not being at 
ease, therefore are in the state of disease. Here is a first 
theorem. Following this is a natural second, namely, 
all sick persons are sick by reason of the presence of 
a something expressed in the dis. Third, diagnosis is 
one with discovery and appreciation of the dis. Fourth, 
removal of Dis leaves Ease remaining. In the four is 
the circle of all that constitutes medicine." 

Echecrates. Why, really, Protagoras, you lay off 
the subject as I should like to hear it from a professor 
if myself a student of medicine. It seems, handleable. 
First, condition. Second, cause of condition. Third, 
removal of cause of condition. Fourth, cure existing 
in removal of cause of condition. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 177 

Prot. It is paradigmatic of a simplicity residing with 
things at large, Echecrates, as these become under- 
stood. Hippocrates having his subject in hand has 
it yet not at his finger-ends. In understanding he 
misunderstands. A hundred ideas are required by 
him to fill the place of one. Philosophy at large is 
capable of like concentration. In place of hundreds 
of systems there are in reality but two. Holding this 
in mind we may surely hope to master our subject. 

Ech. And pray, Protagoras, what names do you give 
these two systems ? 

Prot. The one is Realism, the other Idealism. By 
the first is meant little different than if one should say of 
a tree or an idea that it is itself and nothing else, the 
other maintains that things are not at all in themselves 
but are one with him who perceives or imagines them. 
To an idealist a cow seen in a dream is exactly one 
with a cow met with in a pasture. 

Ech. Why, Protagoras, are you not bringing us 
again face to face with the original arguments, namely, 
one side maintaining that " things are what they seem 
to be," the other that "things are only what they 
seem to be to the senses that use them" ? 

Prot. There are alone these two sides. Men see 
things differently by reason of difference in means 
used by them. There is sight through outer eyes and 
sight through inner eyes. There is, as already has 



178 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

been defined, Common sense, and Educated sense, and 
Egoistic sense, and Soul sense. To be in possession 
of these four means of recognition enables one to see 
around a circle ; with which circle alone is complete- 
ness of understanding. The strongest of these means 
of understanding lies with Soul sense. The weakest is 
with Common sense. 

Judgments at large are perceptions as lying with 
Common sense. By Common-sense judgments are 
meant opinions existing in the simple exercise of sight, 
taste, touch, smell, and hearing. This definition is to 
be appreciated in order that contrast be made with 
Educated sense ; the meaning of this latter lying with 
exercise of the reasoning faculty, the two characters of 
judgments separating themselves according to extent 
or lack of experiences. Educated sense, if serving no 
other purpose, shows the absolute unreliability of esti- 
mates put on things by Common sense. So far as the 
simple use of eyes and ears is concerned, cultivation, 
or the growing of experiences, quickly discovers that 
a man is to hesitate before declaring as to seeing what 
he sees or hearing what he hears. A mother may 
not truly say that she sees her own child.* 

Ech. The last is true enough. She sees Matter; 
that is, she sees the environment of her child's Ego. 

* See " Nineteenth Century Sense." 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 79 

Prof. Your brightness, Echecrates, commends itself. 
It would hardly be necessary or indeed seem desirable 
to speak of stones lying upon a road that some driver 
is to pass over if one could be sure of his not running 
against them. Philosophy, unhappily, is a way that 
has been crowded with stones. One occupying or 
assuming the place of adviser cannot be sure these 
stones will not be run against ; on the contrary, he may 
be very sure they will be, and that wheels and axles 
will get twisted and splintered out of all usefulness by 
reason of them. 

To "Common sense," everything being accepted 
to be what it seems to be, there is no place for confu- 
sion ; an apple is an apple, a peach is a peach, a brick 
is a brick. To Educated sense, everything showing 
itself to be not at all what it seems to be, confusion is 
everywhere; the taste and smell and color of apple 
and peach are not at all in the fruits, but in a percipi- 
ent ; a brick is a phenomenon existing in the noumenon 
of Matter, needing alone to be analyzed that it disap- 
pear as though treated in a dream out of which the 
dreamer has awakened. Common-sense people know 
everything, — in their own estimation. Educated- 
sense people are led to doubt as to anything being 
known, — this out of their learning. 

The inexperienced are what is to be called dog- 
matists. An old-time remark of the master is not 



180 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

forgotten by us : " Men are ready with an opinion 
on a subject in proportion to their ignorance of it." 
People not experienced in analysis naturally assume 
that what they see, smell, taste, hear, and feel of 
things, this the things are. A dogmatist, to make il- 
lustration, is one who prides himself on being of no 
higher import than sheep or swine ; this in truth if 
not in description. Dogmatism is the natural con- 
dition. Common sense and dogmatism are one. A 
philosopher grows from nowhere if not from a Common- 
sense man. 

Let us, then, follow steps taken by the philosophers, 
and let us go needfully and understandingly, for it is 
no idea with a seeker after wisdom simply to glean 
words, but what he desires is to get hold of that which 
opens to him the meaning of himself. 

Realism. It is to be put down that so soon as men 
progressed to the experience of thinking — i.e., to com- 
paring — they divided into two classes, the one find- 
ing its designation as Realist, the other as Nominalist. 
A Realist maintains that names stand identical with 
things named. A Nominalist, on the contrary, dis- 
avows general conceptions, or universals, as these are 
set forth by names. 

Realism is one with what Plato means by his 
"Idea." Realism declares, as did Plato, that figure 
is nothing but one with expression of a thing, as 



THE ETERNAL NOW. l8l 

though he might say of a model that its purpose is to 
show a reality of which it is representation. It con- 
tends, to enlarge the example, that there is such a 
thing as virtue or vice or holiness or unholiness. Let 
us for a single moment consider such an issue out of 
dogmatism. Assuming a dogmatist, or natural man, 
to judge of objects through the common senses, is it 
not to be taken for granted that Ideas would come to 
offer themselves to him after a similar manner with 
objects ? Hence Ideas, or Ideals, as existing with Re- 
alism: Idea, for example, of ferocity or mildness, of 
good or bad, of circumference or centre. Is it not a 
practice even with the general philosopher to speak 
of colors as Red or Green or Yellow or Violet, as in 
not unlike manner the capital letter is used by him in 
expressing ugliness, beauty, vice, virtue, evil, good? 
Consider the weakness, Echecrates. Color is certainly 
not a thing apart from what is colored, while to assert 
that a thing is ugly or beautiful is to say nothing of it 
but as it shows to the taste of one who looks. If Cebes 
is giving attention he will recall what Critias told him 
of the debate between the master and myself at the 
house of Callias, where realism received a quietus that 
should have rendered the condemnation of Roscelin 
a disgrace to the first century, to say nothing of the 
eleventh. 

While Plato was a Realist, the master is a Nominal- 
16 



1 82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

ist. Nominalism, as the opposite of Realism, rejects 
universals. The meaning of things, according to it, 
exists wholly by relation. There is neither zenith nor 
nadir save as these associate with the time of day at 
which a man looks upward or downward. Good to- 
day may very readily be bad to-morrow. Names are 
breaths. While the realist holds that names have cor- 
respondent existences, that ugliness and beauty and 
vice and virtue and unholiness and holiness are things 
in themselves, the nominalist derides his inferred short- 
sightedness. A nominalist, carrying his system to its 
ultimate, could as justly as honestly deny to-morrow 
what is asserted to-day, justification lying with changes 
that a single twenty-four hours may have brought 
about. Nominalism is thoroughly combative of the 
fixed as this exists in realism. It is no system or 
religion for sciolists or what these moderns term 
churchmen. It seems, however, both defensible and 
irrefutable as to its premises and positions. 

Ech. Are you not wrong, Protagoras, in assuming 
the master to deny universals? Certainly God and 
Matter are universals to him. Perhaps, however, this 
is not what you mean ? 

Prot. It is hardly fair to decide for the master while 
sleep closes his ears and shuts in his tongue. He 
denies universals except as to these two, and if this be 
borne in mind his nominalism stands forth clear as the 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 83 

mid-day sun. The master's nominalism carries to 
Idealism.* 

Idealism. Idealism is the doctrine that things are, 
to the senses which use them, what to the senses they 
seem to be ; that they are never anything else. With 
this system things are not in themselves, but are in the 
something apart from themselves that perceives them. 
Idealism is Ego as maker of things at will. An Ideal- 
ist is optimist or pessimist by reason solely of himself; 
he being creator of externals. A thing, ill to taste or 
smell, or other sense, cultivated into agreeableness, is 
one with a thing made over ; the idealist is his own 
maker or unmaker of things. Idealism denies verifica- 
tion as one with a rule of fixity, recognizing, as it as- 
sumes to do, that rule is never elsewhere than with a 
percipient. An Idealist is the world in himself. 
There is no world external to Ego. Idealism, finding 
that rocks and the everlasting hills are resolvable into 
an intangible essence, which essence is void and form- 
less, denies all reality save as Ego, being percipient, 
is reality. Things are representations of ideas. Man's 
self is the creator of ideas. What is thought is the 
true and only existent. The world exists not to a 
man who sleeps without dreaming, as in like manner 
it would not exist to one dead and not resurrected. 

* See this book, p. 41. 



'184 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Ech. If memory plays me not a trick, the mas- 
ter quotes Plato in a class that seems to correspond 
closely, if not identically, with what is here defined 
as Idealism. 

Prot. No wonder, Echecrates, that you miss the dis- 
tinction, for it is no difficult matter to* refine it away 
entirely. Try again for the general idea. Realism 
holds for reality in ideas, that is, that ideas are one 
with so-called real things ; the idea of a tree one with 
a tree. Idealism, on the contrary, holds that neither 
tree nor idea of tree is elsewhere than with an Ego 
that sees or imagines the tree. Plato, scarcely in 
agreement with either pure Realism or Idealism, 
claimed reality as existing alone with the Idea. See- 
ing, for example, the model of a thing, he would seem 
to be right in declaring it representation and not the 
thing itself, which being admitted, the thing would at 
once stand forth as Idea. Models, might Plato have 
said, are made and disappear over and over, but Es- 
sence, or Ideal, of which they are models, remains 
unchanged and unchanging. 

Here, Echecrates, with two conditions for a judg- 
ment of the world, we stand where four were appor- 
tioned by you for the circle of medicine. 

EcJi. But, my dear Protagoras, consider the books 
and the philosophers ! 

Prot. Here again is our revolution, Echecrates. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 185 

Find the books and the philosophers where you will, 
whether in Asia, Europe, or the other continents, all 
are, after some manner or other, Realists or Idealists ; 
this for the overriding reason that there is nothing else 
for them to be. 

Ech. You refine happily, and to the making of 
things plain and easy, Protagoras, yet, as Socrates still 
sleeps, and indeed, as shown by his heavy snoring, is 
in no way disturbed by our talk, I must beg you con- 
tinue, if perchance there is more to be said.* 

Prot. Let us, then, replace the terms Realism and 
Idealism respectively with the words Objectivism and 
Subjectivism. 

Objectivism. Taking here no heed of what was 
given as a definition of Realism, we are to expose 
Objectivism as assertion of object. Object is external 
as reality. Philosophers of the objective school restrict 
their attention and examinations to things as things 
offer themselves to the senses. Objects are one with a 

* The interested reader if laying down the volume in hand at this 
page and supplementing it with the book "Thinkers and Thinking" 
will find thinkers and thinking reviewed from Thales, B.C., to writers 
of the present day. 

See also Plato's " Republic," beginning of seventh book ; also the 
'« Phaedo." 

See also Schopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian philosophy, 
beginning of his second book. 

16* 



1 86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

non-ego; that is, objects are other than what I is. 
Object is one with science ; the meaning of science 
being analysis of object. An Objectist holds himself 
as an observer observing an object that is not himself. 
Observing is assumed to furnish an observer with truth, 
truth being assumed in turn to lie in correspondence 
of order and ideas, and sequence as to phenomena. 
All purely scientific observers are Objectists. Such 
deride speculation related with the processes of de- 
duction holding strictly to the inductive manner of 
Aristotle.* Such, however, fail to notice that the data 
from which they start lie nowhere else than with as- 
sumptions out of the Ego. Relating to such finality 
Philippides has the following. A baby grandson said 
he would buy a woodpecker. " Where," asked Philip- 
pides, "is the money to come from?" "From the 
mother," answered the boy. "And from where will 
the mother get the money?" queried Philippides. 
" Out of the bank," said the boy. "And where does 
the bank get it ?" asked the philosopher. The grand- 
son, appealing to the mother, repeated her answer, 
"Out of the people." "And where," continued 
Philippides, "do the people get it?" Reply, after a 
similar manner, was, " Out of the miners." "And 

* Inductive : denoting inferences led up to by preceding steps ; 
getting to an up -stairs room by means of its steps; learning of a 
thing through its analysis. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 87 

where do the miners get it?" persisted Philippides. 
Boy and mother both laughed, the latter's reply being 
imitated by the child, that " the miners get it out of 
the earth." "And now," said Philippides, "tell 
where the earth gets it." Reply was hard to be re- 
peated by the little tongue, " Her gets it out of a con- 
catenation of circumstances," was the answer. It is 
not different with the Objectists : object with them 
comes as to its finality out of a concatenation of cir- 
cumstances, and thus they find themselves fallen into 
the lap of Idealism. 

Subjectivism. Alike unheeding a definition of 
Idealism, Subjectivism is to be exposed as the opposite 
to Objectivism. Subjective is one with Ego. External 
is in seeming, not in reality. Man is creator. Creation 
disappears as man ceases to create. World is much or 
little, wide or narrow, high or deep to a man according 
to his personal creational activity. The system is that 
of identity of subject and object. Now, Ego exists 
nowhere else but in Ego. Subjectivism, in its essence, 
is to be most simply illustrated by likening it with 
dream-life. A man awakening from a dream denies 
the world in which he has lived while yet unable to 
deny the living in it. Subjectivism makes of existence 
a continuous dream. A man unable to live in a sub- 
jective sense is one with what might in truth be called 
the dead. Not to feel and know and understand sub- 



1 88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

jectivism is one with feeling and knowing and under- 
standing nothing. Living and not being subjective as 
to consciousness, is one with sleeping and being dead as 
in absence of dreaming. Absolute sleeping is one with 
absolute rest from creating. 

Let us now pass to the two most modern synonymes : 
Materialism and Spiritualism. 

Materialism. Unheeding the definitions given of 
Realism and Objectivism, Materialism is to be de- 
scribed as an aspect of opinion that denies Existence 
outside of Matter. Self-consciousness, while necessarily 
accepted by it, has yet alone to it the signification of a 
bubble as this develops out of effervescence, the latter, 
in turn, being resultant of chemical change lying with 
relation. God is not, nor is Ego, per se. Universal 
lies with Matter. With Matter lives a law of phenom- 
enal change tending to evolution. Cause of change is 
cause. Intelligence is named in this system Causality. 
What Causality is, Materialism has no other name for 
than cause. Recognizing as a basis for its system what 
it calls Matter, it assumes this to possess in itself power 
to ascend from a particle of dirt to human capability. 
Objective, in this system, is its own observer, knowl- 
edge is one with the thing known.* Materialism is the 
basis of science. Overlooking the incongruity of law 

* Here it is not easy to separate Materialism from Idealism. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 89 

existing independent of lawgiver, not unheeding it, 
for Materialism denies law or lawgiver outside of 
Matter itself, it is the system that pertains to worfc of 
chemist or mechanic. Materialism loses itself the 
moment recognition is reached that Matter itself is a 
thing that the physical senses cannot take hold of. 

Spiritualism. Still alike unheeding definitions 
given of Idealism and Subjectivism, Spiritualism is to 
be expressed as one with what is meant by recogni- 
tion of Ego, its meaning and its capabilities. The 
word used by it in the Occident to express man is 
Spirit, meaning by this, Ego. The word it employs 
in the Orient is Astral. Spiritualism is not the re- 
ligious incident, or association, for it relates quite as 
much with inferior animals as with superior men. A 
spiritualist, as a philosopher, holds God and Matter as 
relative associates of the Ego, or selfhood. Ego, to 
him, is in no sense the body, nor is it God. I is I. 
Ego, or Astral, is the existence he considers. If a 
man be a spiritualist of degree he is found to gradually 
lose sense of Matter and to walk the ground as one in 
a daze, this out of the reason that he lives with what 
unspiritual people call imagination, which imagination 
is to him sight of an eye from which a cataract has been 
removed and which by reason of an unencumbered or 
unveiled sight that has been reached lets him see things 
as he believes them to be. In a word, he sees selves 



190 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

and things, not as these show to the ordinary man, 
through representations or models, but as Idea, or 
reality, which are the things themselves. The sense 
by which a spiritualist sees is the Egoistic, and not 
Common sense, nor Educated sense, nor God sense. 
He is by nature, or through concentration, clairvoyant 
and clairaudient. Seeing and hearing what are neither 
seen nor heard by the masses, reputation of singularity, 
if not indeed of lunacy, quickly attaches itself to him, 
they who relate with the attaching lacking perception 
to recognize that what is here derided is one with what 
is applauded as met with in people who see pots and 
kettles and who make models of them under the name 
of inventions. 

Spiritualism is absolutely one with what, for lack of 
better term, may be called the ism of the dream state. 
To be asleep or dead is, to a Spiritualist, one with 
being awake or alive. Ego is the thing to be con- 
cerned about, not body. In spiritualism is under- 
standing of ascending and not staying ascended, and, 
as well, of descending and not staying descended. 

This is all, Echecrates ; and in considering the defi- 
nitions given we will stand, I think, in agreement as 
to there being but two ways of looking at things, — 
namely, from an outside and from an inside. I think, 
as well, we will stand agreeing that confusion is not at 
all in itself, but in the mixing of ways. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. I9I 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 



Protagoras. Now concerning the philosophers. 

Having separated philosophy into the two aspects of 
Realism and Idealism, which, on analysis, are found to 
differ in words rather than in facts from Objectivism 
and Subjectivism, or Materialism and Spiritualism, 
we are led naturally to a conclusion that these two di- 
rections are the windows of outlook for the lookers. 
Too much credit is hardly to be given Thales, from 
whom Anaxagoras got his cue, and in turn the master 
here, Socrates, from him, for that first and great ques- 
tion which set his age to thinking, and which, it is 
perceived, holds uppermost place to-day, — namely, 
"Who and what is Thales?" in other words, who and 
what is a man ? 

Outside is seen before inside. It is to be premised 
that philosophy started with observation of surface. 
Common sense, or, to express this better, the common 
senses, begin consideration of things as these offer 
themselves to sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. 
Inside is reached with the question as to who or what 



I92 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

it is that looks on outside. This question is inferred 
to have offered itself first to Thales.* 

Greece and India and Egypt are closely related, 
if indeed not inextricably mixed, as to the opening 
epoch of philosophy. The times of Thales and his 
school are, as these moderns reckon, from before the 
Christ six hundred years down to four hundred. Pre- 
vious to the Ionians there is nothing but what comes 
under the head of primitive. True, the condition was 
not " that of general incoherence, as this relates with 
absence of ideas," but there was such lack of anything 
like analytical or scientific thinking that men dreamt 
not of living otherwise than in the shadow of a mytho- 
logical pantheon which their fathers had built and pro- 
vided with gods. Whatever the Biblical Adam might 
have known of his creator, it is evident enough that 
his descendants left the knowledge in the garden of 
Eden, — hence gods corresponding with phenomena. 

Turn where man will, to Greece, to India, to Egypt, 
or to China, there is found nothing but " Common 

* Philosophy is one with inquiry. Thales opened the epoch. Be- 
fore him were none of whom he might learn. He could turn no- 
where but toward Nature, and here he did turn, seeking to learn of 
her the mysteries of being. Of God, as an intelligence, as has been 
suggested by Hegel, he could have had no conception. He believed 
in God, but these were many, and of generation. A god developed 
from water as did a tree. See " Thinkers and Thinking," p. 62. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 93 

sense" before the pre-Christian seventh century ; that 
is to say, men accepted things as being what they 
showed themselves. It is a curious fact that Ontol- 
ogy* started, apparently, in many places at the same 
time, or almost at the same time, — this start being ex- 
pressed by Educated sense in one direction, and by 
Egoistic or perhaps Soul sense in the other. These 
were as separate, yet scarcely distinct, currents repre- 
senting what later came to be called Realism and 
Idealism. Culmination of the original Realism is in 
Aristotle. Idealism shows its distinction in Philo. f 
The former made short work of the subject of origin. 
"Matter is origin," he says; "Matter always has been 
and will be. Matter has end, yet each end is begin- 
ning to a new end. End is form, and the absolute 
form is spirit. J" Philo, the man of Soul, saw in Mat- 

* Ontology. "The science, or thinking, that inquires into the 
essential nature and relation of things." 

f In the judgment of many, Zeno would no doubt be named in 
place of Philo. 

% Aristotle, as to this, is comprehended better in Spinoza than in 
himself, just as, in turn, the Jew is best understood by him who is ac- 
quainted with the Stagirite. " Substance is the sum of the all. Sub- 
stance is the cause of itself; its being concludes existence in itself; 
substance is the positive ; substance is nature ; substance is God. By 
God I understand the ABSOLUTE Infinite Being ; in other words, God 
is substance constituted by an infinity of attributes, each of which 
expresses an eternal and infinite essence.'* 
I n 17 



194 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

ter not cause, but emanation out of cause : " Matter 
is God, yet God is not Matter." The two are later 
a great sea in Des Cartes.* "There are two other 
substances," teaches the Breton, " beside the Primal, 
created by the Primal, these being Mind (thought) 
and Matter (body)." 

Cebes. He meant by mind Ego, did he not? 

Prot This. 

Ceb. So I think you two hold alike ? 

Prot. This, again. 

Ceb. As the premise of the Breton relates with the 
Hypostases it seems a solid foundation. 

Prot. There is none other that is without confusion. 
It is as that which proves common rest to diving 
fishes and flying birds. Schools and systems depart- 
ing from it come back. A road that is a circle neces- 
sarily returns on itself. Here is Origin, Cebes: let 
it be assumed demonstrated until later you feel your- 
self at liberty to deny or compelled to accept. 

The Greek intellectual age began, as we understand, 
with Thales, and ended practically with Aristotle ; the 
latter being a pupil of Plato. The date of the birth 
of the former was, before the Christ, 640; the latter 
was born three hundred years later. The contempo- 

* See for Aristotle, Philo, Des Cartes, and Spinoza, the book 
*' Thinkers and Thinking." Modern positivistic studies are best made 
in Auguste Comte. Idealism finds its happiest exponent in Berkeley. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 195 

rary of Plato and Aristotle in China was Mencius, who, 
as philosopher, was the successor of Confucius, the 
latter being born five hundred and fifty-one years be- 
fore the Christ. Gautama, the Buddha of India, that 
Buddha whose teachings are hope and inspiration to 
over four hundred millions of people, came into the 
flesh, or was incarnated, to use the Indian word, about 
the same time with Thales. The name of Moses sug- 
gests itself. Moses was born thirty-three hundred 
years ago. Whatever was the learning of the Egyp- 
tians of his time, there is little doubt but that it was 
possessed by this describer of the creation. Manetho, 
an historian and high-priest, commences his writings by 
an introduction of Menes, the first king of Egypt and 
founder of the first thirty dynasties. Before Menes 
the country was ruled, he tells us, by gods and demi- 
gods. Menes appears upon the stage of Egyptian his- 
tory, indefinitely, two or three thousand years before 
the era of the Christians. He is credited with having 
introduced worship of the gods. A people arrived at 
the pantheistic conception, if at all analytical, shortly 
reaches the monotheistic conception. 

Ceb. I see ! Gods signify God, as children a father. 

Prot. Moses, who is the just successor of the dynas- 
ties, wrote certainly as a pure monotheist. " In the 
beginning," commences his cosmogony, "God cre- 
ated the heavens and the earth." Passing through the 



IC/> THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

centuries down to the modern questioning of Spinoza, 
it comes to be asked, "Of what, or out of what, did 
God create the heavens and the earth?" "Accept- 
ing," said Spinoza, "that in the beginning was God 
(let us here name it Origin), that God was the All and 
the Everything, that he was the omnipresent Univer- 
sal, how," he asked, "could even the God create 
out of himself a thing unlike himself?" 

Ceb. Why, Protagoras, here are Aristotle and Philo 
brought to a common platform. It seems to make 
little difference as to whether the primal is named 
Matter, as by the Stagirite, Substance, as by the Jew, 
or God, as by Moses, and Philo, and the moderns. 

Prot. Why, no, Cebes, seeing that as to both God 
and Matter alike we are unable to know what they 
are ; that is, we neither know nor can know anything 
about them save as they exhibit and stand to us 
through phenomena. 

Ceb. I assume you to mean, Protagoras, that they 
are to us as are boards to a carpenter? 

Prot. Exactly ; for use, as use is found to lie with 
them. A Jewish historian, Josephus, stands interme- 
diate to Moses and Spinoza, being practically contem- 
poraneous with the Christ ; necessarily after the times 
of Thales and Anaxagoras and Plato and Aristotle, 
and as necessarily a philosopher in the sense of being 
learned. Taking up this subject, which he assumes 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 97 

to be as unimportant as unknowable, he says, in the 
preface of a history he has written of the Jews, 
" Moses wrote enigmatically, sometimes allegorically, 
and sometimes in plain words." In other plain 
words, Josephus did not know what to make of Moses' 
cosmogony.* 

Ceb. Will you not speak plainly here, Protagoras ? 

Prot. Josephus and Moses were two. The former 
may not have possessed Soul sense, the latter might. 
If the difference existed, speech and view could not 
possibly be the same. In Moses is recital, not demon- 
stration. To know, or to rest in assurance that one 
knows, is to be dogmatic. Moses is dogmatism itself. 
For myself I have not the slightest interest in any 
story about creation. I am not interested, because 
of failing to see that the Something or Nothing out 
of which creation is created is of relation or con- 
cern to me otherwise than as it stands to the uses of 
senses that have to do with it. 

Ceb. This seems to me Aristotle's way of looking at 
the matter. 

Prot. Confusion is everywhere, save with the hypos- 
tases. Sense, or Thing, appeals to Sense or Thing. 
Matter acts in Matter. Ego acts in Ego. Soul acts 
in God. Conjoined, as in man, the three are man's 
self, his world, his God. 

* Cosmogony. Origin or creation of the universe. 
I 7 * 



I9# THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Ceb. Assuredly, Protagoras, neither the Common 
senses, the Educated senses, Egoistic sense, nor Soul 
sense gets hold of any but the three things consti- 
tuting the human hypostasis. 

Prot. This for the reason that there is nothing else ; 
hence universal and man are one ; hence, again, the 
study of universal is one with study of a man's self. 
This is what Zoroaster meant in his declaration that 
" in knowledge of Self is understanding of the world." 

Shall I go on ? Or perhaps with this declaration of 
indifference as climax your interest stops and you are 
become as the horse in a bark-mill ? 

Ceb. It does indeed seem like to an around and 
around, any and every place being equally good as 
start or ending. But pray go on, that more of these 
philosophers may show themselves. 

Prot. In the interval between Thales and Epicurus 
there talked and wrote as thinkers who invite men- 
tion Xenophanes, Zeno, Empedocles, Democritus, and 
Pyrrho. The first of these, in his conception of 
beginning, struck the hypostasis God, this being the 
opposite to the hypostasis of Aristotle.* " To conceive 
Origin as incipient, and not Self-existent, he held as 
impossible. Nothing can be produced from Nothing. 
'Whence, therefore,' he asked, 'was Origin produced? 

* Hypostasis, singular. Hypostases, plural. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 1 99 

From itself? No; for then it must already have been 
in existence to produce itself, otherwise it would have 
been produced from nothing. Hence primary law. 
Origin is self-existent ; if self-existent, consequently 
eternal.' "* Zeno, not the Stoic, but him of Elea, 
is also to be credited for catching conception of 
hypostases. Out of Reason, he held, idea of Being is 
obtained. Out of use of the senses many things are 
found to exist. Zeno used the word God, not Being : 
the latter was the term of Parmenides : there is dif- 
ference alone in the calling, however; Origin, God, 
Being, mean the same thing. Empedocles appealed to 
Reason for his knowledge and denied the reliability of 
the senses. By reason he meant inspiration as this is 
receivable by Egoistic sense,f or, if this is not exactly 
what he meant, there is but the other thing he could 
mean, Soul sense. Such conclusion is not unaccept- 
able, because it maintains the knowing of Like by 
Like. Democritus was he who spent a great patri- 
mony in pursuit of knowledge. His conclusions are 
closely akin with those of the modern Berkeley. Sen- 
sation he affirmed to be one with truth, in other words, 
one with a thing sensed. Interest in Democritus lies 

* Lewes. The word used by this author is Being, in place of 
Origin. 

\ For illustration of this see chapter on Mediums and Sensitives in 
" Nineteenth Century Sense." 



200 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

with a famous question put by him, — namely, " How 
does a man see things external to himself?" This 
query directs to the sense of sight. Here was an era 
in philosophy. What has gone before shows plainly 
real or seeming division here of realists and idealists, 
the one holding that things are what they seem to be, 
the other denying that a thing is anything but what it 
appears to be to a sense that uses it.* 

Simmias. A question just here, Protagoras. We 
understand you as agreeing with the master that "a 
thing is to the sense that uses it what to the sense it 
seems to be" ? 

Prot. You understand aright : it is certainly this. 

Sim. Arsenic is white and sugar is white : what if 
the first be mistaken for the latter? 

Prot. I fear, Simmias, you will never make a phi- 
losopher : white is white, and not the poison or sweet 
of arsenic or sugar. 

Sim. You speak truth, Protagoras, yet discourage 
me. Arsenic, as you hint, and as cannot fail to be 
seen from the hint, relates with Educated, and not with 
Common, sense. Let Democritus go, and the others as 
well ; nothing seems to be learned in discussing them. 

Prot. You are to be agreed with, Cebes ; that is, 
considering the principles of knowledge in our pos- 

* See " Thinkers and Thinking," or, much better, see " Principles 
of Knowledge," by Berkeley. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 201 

session.* A moment, however, before letting them 
go. Greek thought, as starting with the Ionians, was 
Realistic ; Indian thought is Idealistic. These two 
characters of outlook we have analyzed. Tracing from 
Thales until Anaxagoras is reached, men and the world 
and the gods are found esteemed as expressions of 
water or air or fire. Anaxagoras related with Diogenes 
in inferring that there must exist somewhere and after 
some manner something that is apart from material 
and with which must reside a directing or supervising 
quality, as, look where the eyes will, as said Diogenes, 
there "evidence of design is to be seen." It is no 
offence to the master to hint that the God of Socrates 
is different only as a higher conception from what 
Anaxagoras named "Mind" and Diogenes called the 
"Soul" of the air.f 

* Reference is here to associate books, " Thinkers and Thinking" 
and " Nineteenth Century Sense." 

f Diogenes of Apollonia follows Anaximenes, whose doctrine of 
origin differed from that of Thales alone in that air, and not water, 
was esteemed the principle of life. The date of birth of Diogenes is 
given as 460 before Christ. The air, as announced by his predecessor, 
he accepted as the principle of life, but he widened the outlook by 
pointing out an analogy with what he called soul ; he meaning by this 
what in the present volume has been illustrated by the watch-inventor 
in relation with the running of watches. The air, he said, may be 
the principle of life only as there resides with it a vital force. The 
air is therefore soul ; it is a living and intelligent being. See 
" Thinkers and Thinking," p. 65. 



202 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Greek thought may have reached India, in a phi- 
losophical sense, only with the times of Diogenes and 
Anaxagoras, for, commence where one will, with this 
people the something that is occult is found to have pre- 
cedence of what is open ; subjective is always before 
objective, otherwise closely related with it. India is 
looked to as the land where Soul sense and Egoistic 
sense show esoteric development as this exists in abne- 
gation of the materialistic : God is highest, Matter is 
lowest ; hence India is the home of Theosophy, a doc- 
trine in which all comes out of Theos, or God, and all 
goes back into him. 

Difference between Greek and Indian speculations 
is fully expressed in difference existing to-day, and 
as, no doubt, difference will continue to exist so long as 
men vary as to age, education, or inspirations, or, to 
put this more justly, as things to be measured are 
judged through the varying media of Common sense, 
Educated sense, Egoistic sense, and Soul sense : Long 
sight and Short sight cannot see alike, nor does a god, 
who looks from above, see as does a caterpillar, which 
looks from below. 

Ceb. Do you imply, Protagoras, that the philoso- 
phers here in this "two thousand years after" are 
akin with the others of the Eternal Now who talked 
and wrote two thousand years earlier? 

Prot. I imply that philosophy is philosophy just as 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 20 3 

Now is Now, so there can be no difference save as just 
pronounced : the material people of to-day are one 
with the material people of all times and places, and 
the spiritual are of similar import ; men can believe 
nothing else but that they see what they see and that 
they hear what they hear ; and what is seen and heard 
by men differs necessarily with the means of seeing and 
hearing used by them. Men advance, however ; hence 
discussion of things on different planes. The famous 
Upanishads of India commence with songs to a Deity, 
passing from these to ceremonies, and only finally to 
logic. With logic is necessarily philosophy. Systems 
multiply with the system-makers, and as the thinkers 
so the thinking. 

Ceb. Did we understand, then, incorrectly, Protag- 
oras, in accepting you to say a little time back that 
there are but two systems ? 

Prot. I am happily corrected in a bad way of ex- 
pressing a thing. What I mean is that a carpenter 
may and does take of the same kind of wood and 
makes out of it large variety. At the present epoch 
the systems of Philosophy to which the name Indian 
is to be applied are six in number. All are Idealistic 
in the sense of being pantheistic. The first, the San- 
khya, deals with the question of the Ionians ; it con- 
siders evolution. The last is the Maya; it discusses 
the existence and meaning of illusions. An interme- 



204 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

diate is the Yoga; it inculcates asceticism. For my- 
self, I esteem the Indian as the highest expression of a 
subjective philosopher, inasmuch as he has reached 
consonance of esoteric situation and inclination. A 
backwoodsman of this America in which we find our- 
selves is a philosopher in proportion as he is antipodal 
to an Indian fakir; that is, as his consonance of situa- 
tion and inclination is exoteric : one gives to the world 
his most in pointing with withered arm towards self- 
abnegation, the other is best employed in felling trees 
and grubbing roots. 

Realism and Idealism, or, to use the modern words, 
Materialism and Spiritualism, go as does a seesaw. 
Which is up, or which down, depends entirely on 
impulse as related with situation. The foot of an 
American seldom touches anything but the material. 
The foot of the Indian spurns mostly everything but 
the immaterial. American and Indian represent all 
the philosophers. 

Ceb. But as to the schools and the classes of phi- 
losophers ? 

Prot. Hist, Cebes ! You ask as one who has not 
lived, or, having lived, has not observed or inquired. 
You remember Gorgias who called himself a rheto- 
rician ? You recall too, no doubt, having heard that 
the orator named his the art of arts, and that, on this, 
the master quickly made felt that he was not differ- 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 205 

ent from a man who might contend that one o'clock 
is all the hours of a day, when, in fact, of itself it 
is nothing. We are to find the thing little different 
with schools and systems outside of that common day 
and night in which we have viewed them. Every- 
thing is Outside or Inside; and these, being fully 
scanned, are found nothing different from a circle, 
which, while in a sense it may be said to be possessed 
of outside and inside, yet is seen to have the one and 
the other by reason of a common line. However, 
consider, if you please, before leaving the subject, 
the school of the Neo-Platonists, who refined some- 
what on the master through Plotinus, Iamblichus, and 
Porphyry in passing from logic to a mysticism which 
latter lies not elsewhere than with the Subjective ; a 
condition living, in turn, with assertion and recogni- 
tion of Ego. Neo-Platonism is one with Alexandrian- 
ism. Its founder was Plotinus, a common porter of 
Alexandria. Passing through centuries, this system is 
found absolutely one with the Spiritualism of to-day. It 
is one with the enunciation of Paracelsus and of Jacob 
Boehm. Going intermediately, it is difficult to separate 
it from that of which it is commonly deemed the antago- 
nist, Christianity. It is one, after close manner, both 
with the Yoga and Maya systems of the Indians.* 

* " Plotinus blushed because he had a body: contempt of human 
personality could go no further. What was offered in exchange? 

iS 



206 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Alexandrianism, as expressive of evolution, is a 
natural result, arising out of a mingling of Realism 
and Idealism. Philo, a true predecessor of Plotinus, 
was educated both in the Objectivism of the Greeks 
and the Subjectivism of the Indians. These schools 
had alike true ideas, yet they seemed in conflict, and 
led, therefore, to scepticism. With Philo, and his 
successors, lay reconciliation. The Greeks talked of 
outside and the Indians of inside. Here was the con- 
fusion. The modern Spiritist, who unwittingly calls 

The ecstatic perception ; the absorption of personality in that of the 
Deity, — a Deity inaccessible to knowledge as to love, — a Deity which 
the soul can only attain by a complete annihilation of its personal- 
ity." Let this, which is a philosophical writer's (of the Comte school, 
Lewes) conception of Philo, be compared with the lesson living 
with the lily sprays as given on page 155 of this book : Soul and 
God one. 

See also Soul, " Nineteenth Century Sense." 

See also " Thinkers and Thinking," p. 159. 

" Faith," says Proclus, " is above all science. Mercury, the messen- 
ger of Jove, reveals to us Jove's paternal will, and thus teaches us 
science, and, as the author of all investigation, transmits to us, his 
disciples, the genius of invention. The science which descends into 
the soul from above is more perfect than any science obtained by 
investigation ; that which is excited in us by other men is far less 
perfect. Invention is the energy of the soul. The science which de- 
scends from above fills the soul with the influence of higher causes. 
The gods announce it to us by their presence and by illuminations, 
and discover to us the order of the universe." See definition of 
truth of this and of its meaning in Soul sense. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 207 

himself Spiritualist, is a jumble of Subjectist and Ob- 
jectist, a person having hold of Thales' hand on one 
side and the hand of Philo on the other : he is con- 
fused and lost by reason of not understanding that his 
hands hold different things. 

The mysticism of the Alexandrians, Cebes, is the 
delight and comfort of all intelligence that reaches to 
the hypostases. Dialectics having evolved the hypos- 
tases, Ego is at once as a hawk with its hood off.* 
Here the modern Berkeley and the more modern 
Schopenhauer. Here these new people, Kant and 
Fichte. Here Bacon, and Des Cartes, and Spinoza, 
and Malebranche. Here Locke. f 

Ceb. Hist, Protagoras ! You run back and forth 
as doth a hound upon the scent. 



* Neo-Platonism is defined happily by Flemming as that which 
despairs of the regular progress of science ; it believes that we may 
attain directly, without the aid of the senses or reason, and by an 
immediate intuition, the real and absolute principle of all truth, God. 
It finds God either in nature, and hence a physical and naturalistic 
mysticism, or in the soul, and hence a moral and metaphysical mys- 
ticism. It has also its historical views, and in history it considers 
especially that which represents mysticism in full and under its most 
regular form, — that is, religions ; and it is not to the letter of religions, 
but to their spirit, that it clings. 

See " Thinkers and Thinking," p. 156. 

f " The mind hath no other immediate object but its own ideas, 
which it alone does or can contemplate." — LOCKE. 



208 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Prot. You hit it exactly, Cebes. In like manner 
doth one tag after the Realists, finding these modern 
positivists improved in nothing on Anaxagoras save 
that they have looked out more of the wheels within 
wheels. In similar way too are we to speak of the 
Agnostics of to-day, recognizing them to be but a 
repetition of Pyrrho's voice.* 

Sim. If the things be in name and not in matter, 
why double more, Protagoras? for myself, I prefer 
coming back to that eternal Now in which I perceive 
to lie the systems and philosophers in a sense little 
different from a long snake turned into a hoop by 
reason of its tail being stuffed into its mouth. 

Prot. To look immediately around is to see all there 
is to see. To listen is to hear all there is to hear. To 
taste, to smell, to touch, is to taste, smell, and touch 
all that is to be smelled, tasted, and touched. Now 
stands still. Nothing has been seen, heard, tasted, 
smelled, or touched but is one with what is. 

* Let your language be, " It may be so," " Perhaps," " Such as it 
is is possible," " I assert nothing, not even that I assert nothing." 
See " Thinkers and Thinking," p. 150. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 209 



FROM CIRCUMFERENCE TOWARDS 
CENTRE. 



Protagoras. Concerning a snake with its tail 
stuffed into its mouth, forming a hoop and affording a 
centre. 

A hoop, Cebes, is the symbol both of life and 
living. A hoop goes round and round in a circle. 
Going round and round, it yet moves forward or 
backward, otherwise it confusedly wriggles and falls. 
Is it thus, or is it not thus, with a hoop ? 

Cebes. There is but one answer to make : it is as 
you say. 

Prot. What as to the earth, which is a great globe ? 
does this also go round and round, and does it at the 
same time move forward and backward in an orbit ? 

Ceb. This is also as you say. 

Prot. And how does it show as regards man? 
Does a man go round and round in a circle ? that is, 
does he go to bed and get up, labor and rest, eat and 
fast, talk and keep silent, show temper and then ami- 
ability, act the sage and play the fool ? doing in turn 
18* 



210 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

all these things, departing from them, and coming 
back to them ? 

Ceb. I think that in such respects, Protagoras, men 
at large are alike with the individual man : All live in 
such a circle. 

Prot. And is it to be agreed, Cebes, that as a hoop 
has a centre, around and about which it revolves, and 
the same as to the earth, it cannot be dissimilar with 
man? 

Ceb. You mean Ego as his centre ? 

Prot. Nothing else could be meant. Body of man 
and rim of hoop are of similar meaning. See you 
anything besides centre and rim, Cebes, in a hoop ? 

Ceb. What more is there to see ? 

Prot. Why, surely, Cebes, you do not overlook 
that the rim must rest upon something, otherwise it 
would fall quickly enough into the centre. It is as 
well the case that this support must be of a strength to 
bear fifteen pounds multiplied by every square inch 
contained in the circumference of the rim ; that is to 
say, a hoop having a rim measuring a thousand square 
inches, the something which forms this intermediate 
between rim and centre must equal in supporting 
power fifteen thousand pounds. 

Ceb. According to this, the unseen part of a hoop 
is fifteen times greater than what is called the hoop* ? 

Prot. We must needs say this; and we are to ap- 



THE E TERNAL NOW. 211 

preciate as well that unseen is exhibited as not 
synonymous with absence. 

Ceb. What is this third attribute of a hoop ? 

Prot. Why, air, of course. This rests upon the 
centre of the hoop, which is one with saying that it 
rests upon itself, while, in turn, the rim rests upon it. 

Ceb. And what is it, Protagoras, that, in like im- 
portance, relates body of man and his Ego ? 

Prot. You have used the right word, Cebes. Had 
you said "manner" instead of "importance," the 
answer would not have been of significance. As hoop 
is not hoop without the three conditions of centre, 
rim, and air, so man is not man without the three 
conditions of Ego, body, and soul. 

Ceb. Would you say, Protagoras, that what the im- 
portance of air contained in the circumference of a 
hoop is to the combined importance of centre and 
circumference, that also is soul in its relation to the 
Ego and body of a man ? 

Prot. This, multiplied by that which is the differ- 
ence between animal and man; for you understand, 
Cebes, that absence of soul is presence of animal. 

Ceb. Protagoras, you do indeed supply hints for 
our furnishing. The common sense of sight sees 
nothing between the rim of a hoop and its centre; 
after like manner it is to be assumed that through 
Soul sense alone may a man apprehend that inter- 



2 1 2 THE PHIL OSOPH Y OF 

mediate of his hypostases which distinguishes itself as 
the God part of his combination. 

Prot. I think we are prepared to go on. 

Ceb. Since the talk regarding the hypostases we 
have tried closely and clearly to consider this self- 
exposing relation of things, recognizing that if details 
are to be appreciated, principles are first to be under- 
stood. This course we were urged to, first by the 
Master, and later by our desires for a kind of knowl- 
edge which we find growing more and more beautiful 
and satisfying as we advance. Phsedo, who is our 
library, as Crito is our purse, has been the means for 
our excursion, and together we have sat into the 
nights quite regardless of sleep by reason of interest in 
expositions which clearly support your assertion that 
Realism and Idealism are the sole two windows of 
outlook on the Universal. 

Prot. How wise you are, Cebes ! Different as the 
thing seems, most people begin building in the air 
rather than upon the ground. Let us now look at 
our foundation, for in this we have place for a corner- 
stone, which, when laid, is unyielding support to all 
that goes atop of it ; this not at all like the resting of 
earth upon an elephant, and this in turn upon a tor- 
toise, and this still in turn upon a serpent. Our 
corner-stone is not less a reality than is support 
through the relationship of gravitation, — a thing which, 



THE E TERNAL NOW. 2 1 3 

like to air, is not seeable by eye or touchable by hand, 
yet which is stronger and of greater weight than all 
the suns and planets of the Universe combined. 

Ceb. The corner-stone is Now ? 

Prot. To emphasize it, Cebes, let us imagine a 
pyramid millions of times broader and higher and older 
than that of Cheops, and let us imagine the stone- 
cutting instruments of all the earth made into one, 
and in turn let us imagine this instrument forever 
engaged in cutting and deepening a line reading 

"An Eternal Now." 

This, Cebes, may faintly express idea of the stu- 
pendous significance of the line as its meaning re- 
lates with a man's understanding of himself, and of 
his relation with the Universal. In application of 
Oneness as to Now and Eternity is disappearance of 
confusions of all kinds, together with all mysteries. 
What could remain to confound when highest height 
and lowest depth and greatest length and widest 
breadth are one with the man standing in their midst ? 
Here is no to-morrow to consider, no yesterday to 
perplex. Here is Oracle with voice ever unmuffled. 
Here God and devil and heaven and hell are one 
with a man's self. Attained to understanding of this 
oneness of Now and Eternity, and of the oneness of 
Man's hypostases with the hypostases of the Universal, 



2 1 4 THE PHIL O SO PHY OF 

how insignificant and unimportant become the dis- 
putes of philosophers and the diversities of systems ! 
Does not even the simple man comprehend that an 
outside implies inside, as, in turn, inside may not 
exist separated from outside ? Seeing Now to be one 
with Eternity, and the hypostases of Man to be one 
with the hypostases of the Universal, is seeing the 
whole. 

Ceb. Concerning this Eternal Now, Protagoras? 

Prot. It, and its relations, alone remain to be con- 
sidered. But how say you, Cebes ? If a man is not 
in an Eternal Now, are we to declare that he is not 
in it? 

Ceb. It would not be easy to say anything else. 

Prot. What as to Consciousness? would you say 
that if a man is unconscious he is not conscious? 

Ceb. This, truly. 

Prot. And would you say, reversing this, that a 
man being conscious he is not unconscious? 

Ceb. Nothing else is to be said. 

Prot. How as to oneness of consciousness or uncon- 
sciousness with being or not being? 

Ceb. Assuredly consciousness is the same as "to 
be," while unconsciousness is one with "not to be." 

Prot. Such being the case, immortality is to be 
declared one with continuous consciousness ? 

Ceb. Necessarily this. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 215 

Prot, And we may not say that consciousness exists 
elsewhere than with consciousness ? 

Ceb. It would be impossible for it to exist save in 
itself. 

Prot. How is it just now with Cebes? is he con- 
scious ? 

Ceb. We have agreed, Protagoras, that Ego and 
Consciousness are identical, and certainly Cebes is Ego. 

Prot. Then, if a consciousness, which is one with 
Cebes, is immortal, that is, if Cebes is immortal by 
reason of being a conscious existence, this conscious- 
ness is to continue unbroken ? 

Ceb. Assuredly this. 

Prot What continues unbroken is That which 
Cebes knows as himself? in other words, what con- 
tinues unbroken is a That which now is? 

Ceb. This, Protagoras, otherwise there is no pres- 
ent Cebes. 

Prot. We are, then, agreed that unconsciousness is 
the reverse of consciousness, — the one being identical 
with non-existence, the other identical with existence ? 

Ceb. Quite agreed. 

Prot. Turning this around, I am to say that we are 
one in a conclusion that consciousness is immortal by 
reason of its being one with Ego, which Ego is an 
Entity, or simple, the entities, or simples, being pure 
existences, consequently immortal ? 



2 1 6 THE PHIL OS OPHY OF 

Ceb. In truth, Protagoras, the argument must be 
held perfect, if doubt is entirely absent as regards the 
persistent nature of an entity. 

Prot. Are we, then, to opine that doubt is not ab- 
sent from Cebes ? 

Ceb. Pardon, Protagoras, it is just away. I had 
momentarily overlooked the noumenal nature of the 
parts composing the hypostases. 

Prot. To be wanting in appreciation and under- 
standing of the Noumena is indeed one with finding 
nothing in the argument of the hypostases. Let still 
other nights be spent with Phaedo.* 

Ceb. But you esteem argument existing in the hy- 
postases unbreakable ? 

Prot. To break it is one with denying hunger when 
one is hungry, consciousness when consciousness is 
present, and God when the construction and rhythm 
of the world are looked at. 

Ceb. Might it not indeed be said, Protagoras, that 
proof of it lies with the Self that finds itself asking 
after proof? 

Prot. Put it as you please, Cebes, yourself holds it 
all. Shall we go on ? 

Ceb, I beg that the unnecessary interruption be 
pardoned. 

* Phenomena, or manifestations, are impossible save as they come 
out of, and go back into, Noumenon. 



THE E TERNAL NOW. 2 1 7 

Prot. Let us, then, put the things together. Cebes 
exists. He exists now. Cebes is Ego. Ego is a 
simple. Simple is immortal. Cebes is immortal by 
reason of being a simple. Immortal is one with un- 
broken existence. Unbroken existence is not possibly 
else than continuous existence. Ergo, Now and Eter- 
nity are the same. 

Ceb. I fear, Protagoras, you will scarcely excuse me, 
but question here offers. Eternity and Now accepted 
as one, what is gained in replacing a familiar with an 
unfamiliar term ? 

Prot. Your last more than excuses the questions put 
together. The word Eternity has been made the 
saddest misnomer of language. It is at one and 
the same time the bugaboo, the land of promise, 
the will-o'-the-wisp, and the cheat of mankind. 

" Man never is, but always to be blest." 

In like manner, he never is, but always to be curst. 
Now, there not being anything else, or time, or space, 
save what now is, man is to recognize that he joys or 
cheats himself always and forever as he relates with a 
Now that is with him. This he may not get away 
from. Heed, Cebes ! Compelled to recognize the 
oneness of Eternity and Now, could it be otherwise 
than that heaven and hell are with That which alone 
is ? Might it as well be otherwise than that heaven, 
k 19 



2 1 8 THE PHIL O SO PHY OF 

or the absence of it, is anything or any place save as 
it is one with presence or absence of God in the 
hypostases ? for surely, as has before been consid- 
ered, presence of God is identical with existence 
of heaven.* 

Ceb. This accords with what you quoted of the 
three lily-sprays as representing difference existing 
with men and the manner of creating difference. f 

Prot. The sprays, Cebes, are become my Zeus, my 
Christ, my Gautama, my Mencius, my Confucius, my 
Mahomet, my all of the philosophers and systems of 
philosophy, my entire and sole religion, my whole 
knowledge of pain and pleasure, my bad genius in 
times of temptation and my good daemon in hours of 
succor; in a word, this dream of a modern is become 
my sole and only lifter-up and puller-down. Heed 
closely, Cebes : temptation is with Matter ; Salvation 
is with Soul. Ego is chooser. To yield to Matter is 
to descend ; to cling by Soul is to ascend. 

Ceb. You have called this dream an inspiration, 
Protagoras : what do you mean by this ? 

Prot. That which a man looks towards after right 
manner, he sees. When, for a year, a month, a week, 
a day, or even a single hour, the Ego is concentrated 

* See " The Unpardonable Sin," in "Nineteenth Century Sense/' 
f See in this book page 155. Also see " Nineteenth Century 
Sense." 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 2ig 

on considering the divine part of the hypostases, this 
suddenly brightens and enlarges and begins the show- 
ing forth of beautiful and unfamiliar images, these 
images enlarging and increasing as to size and signifi- 
cation proportionally with the concentration. This 
dream is an inspiration in the sense that Mahomet's 
camel is a revelation. Lying down in sleep is one 
with Freedom of Ego to visit Olympus or Hades. 

Ceb. I think I grasp what is meant. The things of 
the sea are different from the things of the land, and 
whether one or the other of the kinds are seen de- 
pends entirely on the direction in which the eyes 
are turned. 

Prot. This, and the nature of the eyes. 
Ceb. Sin, as existing with Matter, is not plain to 
me, Protagoras. What is there in Matter that is bad ? 
Prot. Nothing at all, Cebes, save in the sense that 
ditch-water is warm and insipid, while spring-water is 
cool and refreshing. Things are relative. It is sin 
against intelligence to relate with Matter in the shape 
of a tall tree during the time of a thunder-storm. Not 
to relate with Matter in the shape of a tall tree when 
the power of the sun threatens a heat-stroke is alike 
sin against intelligence. 

Ceb. Your convictions are in accord with the 
master's. " Nothing," he maintains, " is good or 
bad in itself." 



220 a THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Prot. You, Cebes, and the rest of you are to scan 
the thing for yourselves ; the words should be, not 
good and bad, but expedient and inexpedient. 

Echecrates. Pardon, Protagoras, may I ask a few- 
questions? 

Prot. Good Echecrates, you have asked so few 
that Cebes may well give way. 

Ech. Considering that the earth upon which man 
finds himself compares with the universe of earths 
as does a single drop of water with all the seas, 
may it not be that an unduly restricted view is being 
taken of the things we consider? This I urged to 
Phsedo, but he maintains denial to lie with the hypos- 
tases. 

Prot. Phsedo I will assume to be acquainted with 
the revelations of both microscope and telescope ? 

Phsedo. I have used the instruments with large 
profit as to inlook and outlook, Protagoras. 

Prot. How is it, Phsedo, with the moons of Jupiter 
and the legs of a mite ? Are the two alike in their 
way? 

Pho3. If by alike you mean correspondence with 
relations, then does it show not different but that as 
much ingenuity has been expended on the construc- 
tion of the one as the other. 

Prot. And how does a moon of Jupiter show as 
compared with the moon of the earth ? 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 221 

Phce. As moons they are the same in the sense of 
being alike reflectors of light that falls upon them. 

Prot. You have seen a rhinoceros, Phaedo. How 
do the legs of such a brute compare with those of the 
mite ? 

Phce. I have dissected both, Protagoras, and what 
the one set is that the other is. 

Prot. Passing from a moon to a mite, Echecrates, 
and finding the two practically alike in that both are 
equally suited to purpose, would it seem unfair to 
assume like equality as existing in all the region sepa- 
rating Cassiopeia's chair from the planet Uranus ? 

Ech. It certainly seems to be as you suggest. 

Prot. Answer candidly, Echecrates. Is there not 
question back as to a heaven and hell existing some- 
where among the stars ? 

Ech. You have read me, Protagoras. 

Prot. Why hesitation ? We are to ask Phaedo if the 

telescope shows a man, like unto ourselves, in the 

moon, or a maiden, like unto Lais, in Cassiopeia's 

chair. If the answer be yes, then there are heaven and 

hell in the two places. If he reply no, then nothing 

is known about the thing. Hist, Echecrates ! Religion 

becomes a simple matter in presence of the hypostases, 

and as absence of religion is reverse of its presence 

this also is found easy to measure. What is, in truth, 

the former of these states, compares in illustration with 
19* 



222 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

the winding and regulating of a watch. The God, 
like Time-of-day, is everywhere : men and watches are 
about alike as to the respective holdings. My own 
watch is my own reminder, not only as to the Time-of- 
day, but as to the state of my religion. The condition 
of my watch, which happens not to be good for hold- 
ing its office of Time, and the relativity of my hypos- 
tases, which, I fear, is even worse as holder of the office 
of God, give me large concern and require much look- 
ing after. In finding my watch an hour or two be- 
hind, which is generally the case, I am reminded of 
the other matter, which, it is to be confessed, is com- 
monly found much farther behind. 

Ceb. Not to interrupt, I think a bad watch is to be 
called a good possession under such circumstances. 

Prot. Circle and orbit, Echecrates, are one with 
constant change : so it is the case that going not 
forward is one with going backward. Now is Now. 
But Now, in like manner as it is Now, is not to be 
imagined of other relation with any probable begin- 
ning or any possible ending. 

Ech. A million years being imagined to have passed, 

you imply the man to be exactly in a state forward or 

backward as he has advanced or retrograded as to 

work ? 

Prot. Karma is Kismet.* Other being the case, man 

• Karma, work. Kismet, result of work. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 22$ 

is not his own maker or unmaker. Consider, Echec- 
rates. How stands the matter with yourself? What as 
to the Now of Athens and the Now of Philadelphia? 
The question is not more easily settled than is the 
weight of salt. Look at the matter after other manner. 
How compare Echecrates' hypostases of to-day and 
yesterday ? How compare the parts as to a decade of 
years back and the present year? Is Ego lightening 
itself with Soul or is it burdening itself with Matter? 
That which has strongest voice speaks the loudest. 
Ask yourself, Echecrates, as to heaven and hell. 

Ech. But I ask further of you. 

Prot. Perhaps you could not ask better. Of a truth 
I may not deny knowledge of both, and if it be that 
the places are separated as are the antipodes I make 
the voyage, even at the present time, with the quick- 
ness that suffices for a man at large to decide between 
a good and a bad action. Like knows like. A cum- 
bersome body makes itself felt as an impediment at 
every step. A man with excess of Soul as to his hy- 
postases has trouble to keep upon the ground. Soul 
is controlling principle. As it is in the hypostases, 
the man goes right. As it is away, he goes without 
godly direction. In presence of the meaning of the 
hypostases it is silly to pray " lead us not into tempta- 
tion,' 7 for this is one with pronouncing God to be 
devil; the word is leave: " leave us not in tempta- 



224 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

tion." Understanding, Echecrates, as we do in our 
comprehension of the hypostases, what it is that stays 
or leaves, a man is not at loss as to where the ear is to 
which he appeals. A body may appeal to Ego not to 
be left to its automatism in presence of a precipice. 
Ego and body may appeal to Soul not to be left with- 
out higher and more reliable direction than is inherent 
in themselves when in presence of a temptation, — di- 
rection, in both cases, as is to be appreciated, that is 
within and not without. Prayer to be saved from 
temptation is unnecessarily loudly uttered where voice 
is given it. Is it not beautiful, Echecrates, that the 
God is commandable even as Time-of-day is at a 
man's command? No man doubts that Time-of-day 
is commandable, or that it is otherwise than at his in- 
stant and immediate service if it please him to hold 
such relation with it. Let a point be esteemed iterated 
and reiterated. Soul and religion are identical. As 
Soul is present in the hypostases of a man, let him be 
heathen, Jew, or Christian, the man is religious. Soul 
lacking, the man is beast, let his title be pope or 
infidel. 

Ech. You are letting in light, Protagoras, on the 
confusion lying with the doctrine, of Special Provi- 
dence as this, after the common fashion, relates the 
care of the God with the afflictions of men. 

Prot. The doctrine of Special Providence, as ordi- 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 22$ 

narily taught and understood, shows the God so mer- 
ciless that the preacher of it is wise in employing the 
physician's art to keep him out of such hands long as 
is possible. Philippides, discoursing on this matter, 
tells the story of one of these preachers who came to 
his garden with the view of securing food for the win- 
ter's table. "I shared with him," said the philoso- 
pher, "as to land, sunshine, and in seed. As to differ- 
ence, he prayed and I hoed. When the fall came, all 
the food was found on my side of the garden." O 
Echecrates ! consider this thing well. A diphtheritic 
babe strangles and struggles and smothers though an 
enveloping atmosphere is filled with the supplications 
of a heart-torn mother. Rivers overflow their boun- 
daries, drowning pitilessly all of life that happens to be 
in the way. Earthquakes engulf, crushing and tearing 
the bodies of men and women and children into shape- 
less masses of flesh and bone. Pestilence settles down 
upon a land, and good and bad alike burn up with 
fever or shrink away in collapse. 

The stand-point of Special Providence being the 
basis of judgment, confusion grows worse confounded 
when the strangling of the diphtheritic babe, the drown- 
ings by overflowing rivers, the crushing and tearing by 
earthquakes, and the burning and shrinking by pesti- 
lence come to be contrasted with the cooing, crowing 
voice of babyhood, the refreshment living with springs 
P 



226 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

that flow out of the hill-sides, the stable mountains and 
valleys affording habitations to men, the salubrious air 
filling to overflowing with health and vitality the 
bodies that breathe it ! Truly, truly, Echecrates, by 
the people who are mistaught as to Special Providence 
the God is beyond finding out. 

Ech. I accept you to mean, Protagoras, that Provi- 
dence implies the use of the legs if one requires to run, 
and the use of a hoe if the need is food. 

Prot. Why, Echecrates, are not legs and arms 
one with means for running and hoeing? Does not 
turning from prayer to medicine bring ease to the 
strangling babe? To keep from drowning is aught 
required but to walk away from a river? Is an earth- 
quake likely other than confined gas seeking a vent 
that could be given it through a hole bored into the 
earth? To drive away pestilence is not the killing of 
microbes found better than whining in the way of 
supplication ?* 

Ech. We are certainly not to understand you, Pro- 
tagoras, as denying appeal to God in times of afflic- 
tion? 

Prot. As implied in your way of putting it, Echec- 
rates, you are. Philippides tells a story about an old 
woman, that applies. Being as devout as she was 

* See " Hours with John Darby." 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 227 

ignorant, and as ignorant as she was prejudiced, she 
had herself remembered many times in the Mass, while 
days without number she had appealed at the Stations. 
Finding no relief, she had turned infidel. In this state 
she had applied to a doctor, who, after recognizing 
that her pain lay in a diseased nerve, which required 
to be cut, told her that her misfortune as to response 
related with the missing of a Station, which Station 
was himself. "Imagine," said Philippides, "what 
effect would be produced on an ignorant old woman 
by a declaration which placed a common mortal on 
a footing with Christ as he passed along on that 
bloody way which meant expiation for the sins of the 
world." 

Ech. Stop, stop, Protagoras 1 let the woman and 
her pain go ! In what consisted the distinctiveness 
of the Christ? 

Ceb. I must interrupt, Protagoras. Your sprays of 
lilies are suddenly become to me what they are to 
you. I see everything clearly. 

Prot. The others may want to hear the conclusion 
of Philippides' story. The old woman shrank away 
horrified, as, before her, the Jews shrank away from the 
Christ concerning whom Echecrates asks, and as later 
the inhabitants of Zurich shrank away from Paracelsus 
and they of Gorlitz from Jacob Bohme, and still later 
as they of Amsterdam ostracized the God-filled man, 



228 THE PHIL OSOPH Y OF 

Benedict Spinoza.* Philippides recounts a simple sur- 
gical performance which cured the woman, restoring 
her to comfort and her family. 
Ceb. How plain it is ! 

Prot. As it seems so to you, Cebes, let it be 
accepted the same as to the others. Curing and hoe- 
ing are one. A garden, and not a station, is the place 
to find potatoes. Garden and station are, however, 
one with the ways and the means of the God. Philip- 
pides' doctor was one with a station, inasmuch as he 
was means to ends. 

Ech. And you would say, Protagoras, that means 
and ends are alike one with a Providence that fails of 
response never but as misunderstood ? 

Prot. It is ignorance, Echecrates, verging on stu- 
pidity, that lives in the presence of so beautiful a 
Providence such a life of misunderstanding. Is it not 
plain, Echecrates, that the Providence which responds 
to prayer is never farther away than is a man's self 
from himself, or than are away the neighbors who 
surround him ? Not to hoe is not to have potatoes. 
Not to cultivate Ego is to lack saving intelligence. 
The breaking up of a body before its time, or out of 
the natural order, is one with ignorance on the part 
of the doctors, otherwise one with self-abuse of the 

* See foot-note, "Thinkers and Thinking," p. 198. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 229 

individual. Consider, Echecrates ! Man and the Uni- 
versal are one. In the perfect law of a perfect God 
man is his own Providence, his own earth, his own 
heaven and hell. Join with me, Echecrates, and all 
who will, in adoration of the God who is ourselves, 
yet who is not ourselves. 



20 



" He is Rosicrucian, whosoever, or wheresoever, that is 
favored with perception of surface within surface and of face 
beneath face. He is to know himself as not Rosicrucian who sees 
nothing of lines between lines, or who is without recognition of 
the openness in occult. He is to know himself as not Rosicrucian 
who is without desire to meditate or unravel. He is not Rosi- 
crucian whose needs find full supply in the materialistic." — 
Nineteenth Century Sense. 



231 



232 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 



FROM CENTRE TOWARDS CIRCUMFERENCE. 

Protagoras. Looking towards circumference, Echec- 
rates, is one with considering capability, while, in turn, 
considering capability is one with measuring hypos- 
tases. 

Echecrates. I hardly understand. 

Prot. Well, you understand, not hardly, but surely, 
that a man is wholly according to his hypostases, 
and that, in turn, hypostases are according to culti- 
vation ? Let us begin again by saying that looking 
towards circumference means considering the associa- 
tions of a circle that revolves about a centre. Con- 
sider, Echecrates ! Is it or is it not the case that the 
rim of a hoop may be blackened and defiled by pitch 
or made bright and shining by other things ? 

Ech. You imply that circumference of the man will 
be of relation, as to nature and character, with the part 
developed in the hypostases ? 

Prot. This, exactly. This, necessarily. 

Ech. Comparing an ordinary man and the Christ ? 
Would this express what you would have understood ? 
For example, what goes to the rim of the hoop of 
bankers and brokers and candlestick-makers ? 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 233 

Prof. You help me along. Of such, Paracelsus says, 
though not exactly in these words, that the lowest phase 
of alchemy is with commutation of per cent, into capi- 
tal, its highest phase the transformation of vice into 
virtue. 

Ech. And what, Protagoras, would Paracelsus have 
said, think you, of the rim of these modern " trust- 
makers' ' ? 

Prot. Whist, Echecrates ! What think you is to 
be said by one, who is not absolute lunatic, of boom- 
erangs, and of the throwers of them ? 

Ech. Is it under the same head that things like tariffs 
are to be estimated ? 

Prot. Tariffs, being acts which feed one people re- 
gardless of the starvation of others, are alike with 
boomerangs and with commutation of per cent, into 
capital. Boomerangs are the instruments of savages. 
Commutation of per cent, into capital is not by any 
means calculation influenced always strictly by justice 
and brotherly love. 

Cebes. Hist, Protagoras ! You hint unpopular doc- 
trine. What, may I ask, are we to say of a rim 
plastered with refusals of a bite from a plentiful loaf 
to such as starve on a mouthful of rice ? 

Prot. The earth is the God's, and the fulness 
thereof; trusts, and tariffs, and race discriminations 
are the antipodes as much of Educated as of Soul 
20* 



234 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

sense; they are one with the contraries of mercy and 
justice, and they are bound to breed retaliation not 
less largely than does a dead dog maggots. 

Ech. Whether or not it prove apropos, you are touch- 
ing great questions. Truly it shows not otherwise, ac- 
cording to such estimate, than that the moderns are 
holding themselves incessantly and tirelessly at work 
on the making of a whirlwind ! 

Prot. What a whirlwind can do when made has 
been often enough felt. We may let this alone, how- 
ever, so far as others than ourselves are concerned ; the 
commuters, the trust-makers and tariff-makers, though 
listeners would be no hearers. A boomerang-thrower 
is susceptible to no argument but that return of the 
instrument which knocks out his brains. 

Ech. Surely, Protagoras, you have thought enough 
on these things to have lighted on a remedy? 

Prot. Why, Echecrates, as all things are with the 
hypostases, this might not be elsewhere. What say you 
is not being cultivated by the people of whom we talk ? 

Ech. Truly, Protagoras, the meaning of the dream 
shows greater and greater. I am to say, as you have 
suggested, for there is nothing else to say, that the Soul 
part is not being cultivated, and that it is being allowed 
to fade and wither from both sight and influence. 

Prot. You say right, Echecrates. Remedy is not 
elsewhere than in turning to that which is the meaning 



' THE ETERNAL NOW. 2$$ 

of the Christian's Christ. Hist ! What do you say is 
the meaning of a big-bodied man ? 

Ech. I would define it as lying with excess of Matter 
in the hypostases. 

Prot. And how would you define a selfish man ? 

Ech. This I esteem is best done in the process of 
exclusion. A selfish man has his selfishness neither in 
Matter nor in God. 

Prot. And what definition is to be found for a 
godly man ? 

Ech. It is not difficult. A godly man is propor- 
tioned by the God .existing in his hypostases. 

Prot. In proportion, then, as a man is godly, he 
sees after godly fashion ? 

Ech. Necessarily this. 

Prot. To be fat, or muscular, in contrast to being 
spiritual * or godly, is to be weighted down, conse- 
quently to have vision restricted to an animal plane ? 

Ech. This, also. 

Prot. Is it, then, difficult to understand what is im- 
plied by turning to the Christ ? Hist, Cebes ! What 
was the example of the Christ ? Did he look up or 
down ? Did he consider self or other selves ? What 
think you was meant by him in that assertion, " My 
kingdom is not of this world"? Was he found bur- 

* Meaning by spiritual, Egoistic. 



23O THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

dening himself with the " things that moths corrupt 
and thieves break through and steal" ? Consider fur- 
ther. Is higher expression of the purpose of the God 
to be found than as set forth in the actions of the 
Christ ? "I and my Father are one" is no misnomer. 

Ceb. But you imply that hypostases of the Christ 
and of men are the same ? 

Prof. The same, with difference ; the first being 
mostly Soul, the other being principally Animal. Here 
and here alone, Cebes, is absence of mystery and con- 
fusion. Is not the Christ a solved riddle to him who 
understands the hypostases? Is he not, on the other 
hand, an unappreciable and, as well, an unmeaning 
myth to one who, not comprehending the hypostases, 
does not know how man becomes or has been born 
one with God ? Is not the confusion of incarnation, 
viewed in the light of the hypostases, one with a ghost 
of the night seen in the presence of a risen sun ? Is it 
any more difficult to apprehend in this light the Christ 
than it is to comprehend a prize-fighter, — the one 
standing for Soul, the other for muscle ? You are right, 
Echecrates, in accepting the dream as revelation. 

Ech. The master, on the conclusion of his discourse, 
wrote the lines to be seen on this neighboring tomb- 
stone. Do these not very well cover the ground of 
man's relationship with man?* 

* See conclusion of first part. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 2tf 

Prot. I will add one for the eyes of the commuters, 
the trust- and the tariff-makers, and, as well, for the 
workers, for these last are, in truth, more frequently 
the destroyers than the helpers of themselves : 
Common Good is the only Good. 

Ceb. Knowing you of old, as I do, Protagoras, I 
perceive you to be leading to a something not yet 
said. 

Prot. You are right, Cebes. The something is that 
mankind at large are as blind leaders of the blind. 
The capitalist faults the worker, and the worker blames 
the capitalist. One is equally wrong with the other. 
Capital represents means for development, and work 
implies the same thing. As it has pleased men to leave 
that equal provision of the Father 

" When every rood of ground maintained its man," 

it is the part of wisdom to make the best of what has 
followed. The circle will, however, sooner or later 
bring back the rood. There is no true material wealth 
but as this relates with turnips and wheat and corn. 
Sooner or later the man in the mine will conclude that 
sunshine is better than darkness ; he of the factory that 
the "sights and sounds" of nature are of cheerier im- 
port than the monotony and whir of spindles.* In 

* See " Brushland," a book treating of country life and living on 
the principle of the rood ; being experiences of the writer. 



238 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

the mean time the workingman adds links to his chain, 
as, offensively, he combats with capital, while, on the 
other hand, capital digs at and undermines its own 
foundation, as it considers labor and its requirements 
from any other stand-point than that of the line written 
upon the tombstone :* 

Common Good is the only Good. 

Ceb. Is there no wisdom with men ? 

Prot. It is found in little degree elsewhere than with 
those apt to be esteemed by Common-sense people least 
knowing, with the illuminati of the order of the Rosi- 
crucians, for example. 

Ech. I have heard, Protagoras, of the estimation in 
which you hold these people, and that you pronounce 
them the only true philosophers. 

Prot. You have heard not incorrectly. Rosicru- 
cianism has as its true definition the getting of judg- 
ments through the process of exclusion. A Rosicru- 
cian is one who tries all things and holds fast by what 
is found best. The advancement of humanity, wherein 
it has truly advanced, has its history fully expressed in 
this class of people, different as the thing may seem to 
such as, like Hippocrates, see in a seething crucible 
nothing but a metal that is being melted, or in a retort 

* Fault may be condoned in the ignorant, but is without excuse in 
the educated. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 239 

only the leaves of plants as these are undergoing distil- 
lation. Rosicrucianism is simply name. To express it, 
as it appeals to me, would be to begin equally signifi- 
cantly with Hercules and his club as with Rosenkreuz 
and his laboratory. The term is one with evolution, 
— not exactly of philosopher's stone out of spectro- 
scopic homceomeriae,* or of man out of ape, but of an 
Immortal out of an Alchemist, and of an Illuminatus 
out of an Immortal. Seneca's lines are expressive : 
" The wit of man is not able to tell the blindness of 
human folly in taking so much more care of our for- 
tunes, our houses, and our money than we do of our 
lives." Heraclitus has a phrase in the same direction 
that reads two ways: "The ass prefers thistles to 
gold."f 

Ceb. A word, if you please, about these Rosicru- 
cians, Protagoras ; that is, if it lead not away as to the 
discourse, for I am entirely without knowledge of them, 
nor have I memory of having heard the master speak 
the name. 



* " The homoeomeriae are elementary seeds of infinite variety out 
of which everything is made." — ANAXAGORAS. 

f" If a man eats the flesh of an animal, the animal flesh becomes 
human flesh ; if an animal eats human flesh, the latter becomes 
animal flesh. A man whose Ego is absorbed by his animal desires 
is an animal, and if it amalgamates with God he is an angel." — 
Paracelsus. 



240 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Prot. It leads not away, but rather towards what is 
well to be said as application of the things talked about. 
Socrates has no occasion to heed a name, himself 
being a born illuminate. With people who rest in 
words, Rosicrucianism stands for a school the disciples 
of which consumed themselves and their lives in a 
search after the philosopher's stone. With people who 
recognize in the experiences of scholars materialistic, 
intellectual, and spiritual development, a Rosicrucian 
is one with any and every man who seeks to find what 
there is to find, and to know what there is to know.* 

Ceb. According to this, we ourselves, being in- 
quirers, are Rosicrucians ? 

Prot. This, unless you like the word " Socratists' ' 
as well, or, what is synonymous with both, " Seekers 
after Understanding." 

Ceb. I see ! It is principles, not professors. 

Prot. This, exactly. Yet if thinkers, aside from 
thinking, invite, curious study is found in reading the 
writings of a class named Occultists, these being people 

*"He is Rosicrucian who lives in looking at the nature of 
things and in getting understanding of one's relations with himself and 
with the universal ; getting at the secret of transmuting bars of lead 
into gold, the composition of that elixir vitse the drinking of which 
renders the drinker immortal, and in studying into that illumination 
which discovers that true knowledge consists in ' knowing that you 
know what you know and that you do not know what you do not 
know.' " See " Nineteenth Century Sense." 






THE ETERNAL NOW. 24 1 

who are a mystery to the namers in the sense that a 
lens-grinder is, in his art, a riddle to the maker of 
crude glass, or, to express this differently, as Educated 
sense is confusion to Common sense, and as Egoistic 
and Soul senses are confusion to the other two. Not 
to become Rosicrucian is to remain fool ; just as not 
to remain animal is to become man or God. Be not 
deceived, Cebes, men are Alchemists, Immortals, or 
Illuminati according as they stand to development, 
and as they " mind the light." * 

* What is known as Rosicrucianism of the books divides itself 
into three periods: 1. The times and experiences of the Alchemists. 
2. The times and experiences of the Immortals. 3. The times and 
experiences of the Illuminati. The first represents a purely material- 
istic view of life, in which the getting of material possessions, or what 
Lucian exhibits as encumbrances, presents itself as highest good ; 
this is the Alchemical age, when the scholars were engaged in private 
and mystical laboratories in experiments directed to the transmuting 
of the baser metals into gold. The second period expresses an intel- 
lectual advance, in which it is recognized that death is more to be 
feared than gold is to be valued ; this is the " Immortal" age ; herbs 
took the place of metals in experiments directed to the discovery of 
an elixir that should save its possessor from dying. The third period 
is the state of to-day. In search after an elixir vitae discovery was 
practically made of distinction between body and Ego ; here was the 
birth of Illuminati. Ego is found to need neither elixir vitae nor liquor 
adolescentiae, it being both immortal and continuously beautiful in 
and of itself. 

" Mind the Light." See " Odd Hours of a Physician." 
L q 21 



242 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Ceb. Would you say that the bankers, the brokers, the 
trust- and tariff-makers, as we find them among these 
moderns, and as well the workers, are not Illuminati ? 

Prot. The bankers, the brokers, the trust- and tariff- 
makers, and the workers are to say for themselves what 
they are. You have not forgotten, I am sure, that 
warning story told by Er when he came back from 
Hades?* Let this pass, however. In looking at the 
brain of a man, Rosicrucianism, as it has been defined, 

* A reader who will turn to the concluding pages of Plato's " Re- 
public" will find the question of Cebes answered in Er's account of 
retribution. " For every one of all the crimes and all the personal 
injuries committed by men, they suffer a tenfold retribution," etc. 
(ioth Book.) Lucian, in his "Dialogues of the Dead," has much of 
interest and concern in the same direction : 

" Charon. Now listen to me, good people, — I'll tell you how it is. 
The boat is but small, as you see, and somewhat rotten and leaky 
withal ; and if the weight gets to one side, over we go ; and here you 
are crowding in all at once, and with lots of baggage, every one of 
you. If you come on board here with all that lumber, I suspect 
you'll repent of it afterwards, — especially those who can't swim. 

" Mercury. What's best for us to do, then, to get safe across ? 

" CHA. I'll tell you. You must all strip before you go in, and leave 
all those encumbrances on shore ; and even then the boat will scarce 
hold you all. And you take care, Mercury, that no soul is admitted 
that is not in light marching order, and who has not left all his en- 
cumbrances, as I say, behind. Just stand at the gangway and over- 
haul them, and don't let them go in till they've stripped." — Transla- 
tion by Rev. W. Lucas Collins, M.A, 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 243 

finds what is to be esteemed an anatomical ultimate in 
a little pink body of such position and relation as to 
create the thought that it associates in no indirect way 
with all other parts of the mass, and as well, by means 
of the Sense-nerves, with all that is external. This 
body is the pineal gland. It is here that our ancients 
located the Soul, and that, later, Des Cartes fixed the 
habitation of the Ego. Let us think of an iron post. 
Phaedo could tell us that no two particles of iron rest 
against each other, but that they are separated by an 
intervening essence. This being fact, it follows that 
an iron post is a double ; that is, if we imagine the iron 
particles removed without disturbance of the inter- 
mediate essence there would remain a post not less a 
reality than when in the character known as iron ; an 
only difference would be that the essence post could 
not be put to the uses of Common-sense people.* Now, 
whether it is, or is not, the case that the pineal gland 
or the general inter-molecular space of the body is 
the habitation of the Ego, or Astral, a thing we know 
nothing about, it is undeniable that there is Ego, or 
Astral, and that this is Itself, and not its habitation. 

Ceb. This is so clearly exhibited in the hypostases as 
not to need further showing. 

* Referring to p, 98 of "Nineteenth Century Sense," the reader 
will find demonstration of this as made in an analysis of human 
bones. See also same book, p. 113. 



244 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Prot. Illumination, as to Rosicrucianism, means 
such recognition as here admitted. A seeker after 
knowledge when arrived at a point assumed as now 
occupied by ourselves has left him alone study of self. 
As scientist he has analyzed Matter, and as theo- 
logian he has apprehended Soul. Self is the interest 
and concern that remain. Here is beginning of de- 
parture from Common sense and from Common-sense 
people. A Rosicrucian, as Alchemist, is yet near 
enough to the bankers, the brokers, the candlestick- 
makers, and the workers not to allow of difference being 
perceived : hence he remains, in the estimation of these 
people, a man of judgment and of parts. A Rosicru- 
cian, on the contrary, as Illuminatus, is as one occu- 
pying the antipodes, being of the enviable few who 
have everything while seeming to have nothing. Such 
a one owns the earth, though he lack title-deeds for 
the showing of his holdings. In the estimation of 
the bankers and brokers and candlestick-makers an 
illuminate Rosicrucian is a man laboring under hallu- 
cinations. 

Ceb. But you would say, Protagoras, that he is the 
wisest of men ? 

Prot. The wisest and the richest, Cebes, for his 
needs go never beyond his ability to produce, nor is 
he burdened by impedimenta. 

Ceb. When dreaming I seem never less myself than 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 245 

when awake, nor do the things with which I relate 
seem less real. Is this something of what you mean, 
Protagoras ? 

Ech. A few months back, Protagoras, I was at the 
house of one of these moderns, and while seated in 
front of a window-blind observed six rivet-heads hold- 
ing the hinge to the frame. As my eyes rested on 
these pieces of iron there was an instant change of 
them into six human faces of a type so godly that I 
have never before nor since seen anything that has 
given me more pleasure. Is this, also, something of 
what you mean ? 

Simmias. I find, Protagoras, that in listening to 
organ music all care and anxiety leave me, and I 
become as one borne upon wings. Is this, as well, 
anything as to what you mean? 

Prot. It needs only that an iron post be considered, 
to understand that what is suggested is one with what 
is implied. Common sense sees the world at large as 
a post is seen by it ; that is, it sees surface only. 
Other means are required for other sight. Educated 
sense, being a condition expressive of a state in ad- 
vance of Common sense, knows an essence post 
through induction; it cannot, however, see it : sight is 
not clear enough. Egoistic sense sees an essence post : 
this with the keenness of a poet's sight of couplets 
and the musician's hearing of strains. Soul sense takes 



24O THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

hold of the God as a hand grasps and holds its fellow- 
hand ; it puts certainty in place of faith. 

Ceb. You suggest, Protagoras, the sparkle that is 
hidden in an uncut diamond. 

Ech. Butterflies, as well, that lie in cocoons. 

Sim. I was thinking of light and heat, as these make 
up the larger portion of lumps of black coal. 

Prot How is it ? Shall a man not believe that he 
sees what he sees, or may he doubt that he has heard 
what he has heard? Let us look at our own follies 
and at the follies of other people. 



21* 



As for my own face, I perceive it to alter more by reason of 
acts than of age, and by comparing what is seen in my glass with 
pictures made of me at varying times, I get measure of my loss 
or gain. 



247 



248 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 



TOWARDS THE SUBJECTIVE. 



Protagoras. If, Cebes, and Echecrates, and all of 
you, we find ourselves arrived at a sufficient develop- 
ment, our parting hour may be celebrated by a look 
through the clouds. 

Looking through clouds is one with inquiring into 
the Subjective. In turn, paradoxical as is the manner 
of the putting, inquiring into the Subjective is one 
with placing what is ordinarily deemed unreal in place 
of the so-called real. Subjective is one with associa- 
tion of Ego and imagination. In other words, it is 
one with state of mind as painter of the pictures of a 
man's circumstances. Bringing the idea half-way be- 
tween Egoistic and Common sense perception, thus 
relating what are called intangible and tangible, 
Subjective is not inaptly to be defined as unseeable 
wind that dashes and scatters seeable spider-webs and 
houses, — curiously enough, the latter more easy of 
demolition by it than the former. 

Changing a figure, we may consider essence posts ; 
understanding, as surely we do, that in such objects 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 249 

we see not only things that are as much real as are the 
iron bodies, but as well definition of what is meant by 
Paracelsus, the Rosicrucian, in that aphorism of his, 
that "the beginning of wisdom is the beginning of 
supernatural power." 

Cebes. Apropos, Protagoras ! Another saying of 
Paracelsus comes to our advantage : " A wood-carver 
takes a piece of wood and carves out of it whatever 
he may have in his mind ; likewise the imagination 
may create something out of the essence of life." * 

Prot. It is well recalled ; it defines entirely what is 
meant by the Subjective. Understanding, as we may 
not help but do, that image is for him who can cut it 
out of the wood, and not for him who cannot or will 
not cut it, we surely are to fault nothing or nobody 
but self if we lack an image. Even more than this, 
as there exist a material post within a material post, 
and a spiritual post within the material posts, so in 
like manner and of like nature image exists within 
images, and, this being the case, one may possess and 
see what he does not so much as either carve or mate- 
rialize. Posts, whether of iron or of essence, are not 
realities, but strictly phenomena ; that is, they are ex- 
pressions of Matter formed into a temporary likeness. 
Anything that is handleable by the senses of organic 

* See chapter on Visions, " Nineteenth Century Sense." 



250 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

life is nothing but phenomenon. What is truly real is 
not of relation with man's organic senses, and were it 
not that the world possesses other than Common-sense 
people the world could come to no exposition of 
itself; Common sense is strictly one with the office 
of hewers of wood and drawers of water. 

Ceb. Regarding Visions ? 

Prof. A Vision is one with an Imagination. As, 
for example, first there is a log of wood, then there is 
an image. An image bought of a carver and carried 
away both goes and remains ; the latter for the reason 
that the wood, and the carving, are not at all essence, 
but alone image and sign. 

Ceb. That which is sold is not, then, parted from ? 

Prot. Hist, Cebes ! You will not deny an image 
that comes out of a log, nor may you deny an image 
that exists uncut in the imagination of a wood-carver ? 
Is thought less thought that it be put not in words ? 
In like manner, is image less image that it remain un- 
materialized? Wood-carvers are Subjectists; they are 
not makers of anything, but are simply beholders and 
catchers of things; they are mediums, or materializers. 
Everything that has an external has, necessarily, an in- 
ternal. Images are everywhere that an internal is, but 
the seers and catchers are few. Sounds fill the air, but 
ears in general have drums too thick for response to 
other vibrations than are made by the ringing of bells 



* THE ETERNAL NOW, 25 1 

and the firing of cannon. What a wood-carver parts 
with in selling an image is one with what an inventor 
sells in parting with a model. 

As concerns things gotten and parted from, an illus- 
tration is complete in that paying and receiving of 
money where a dozen people indebted to a like 
amount, the one to the other, sit in a circle, a coin 
representing the exact amount of the debt being the 
only piece among them. Number one, having the 
coin, pays it to number two, to whom he stands in- 
debted for the amount. Number two passes it to 
number three, liquidating through it a second debt. 
Three hands it in turn to four, so four to five, and 
five to six, and so on until twelve is reached. Twelve 
gives it to one, from whom it started on the round. 
The debts, all of them, are now fully and justly paid, 
while the coin, having undergone twelve transferences, 
is as it was and where it was. Is it not to be seen, 
Cebes, that the thing would have been the same if a 
word, and not a coin, had been used ? 

Ceb. I think your illustration is another paradigm, 
Protagoras. 

Prot. Why, life itself is wholly paradigm, Cebes ; as 
though nature had purpose in placing always a certain 
restriction of view on the senses of men, to an end of 
securing work that would be apt to remain unaccom- 
plished without existence of such misunderstanding. 



252 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

Look, for example, at the bankers and brokers and 
candlestick-makers. Do these, after consuming years 
in a sacrifice of all that is morally healthy and most 
desirable, carry their dearly-paid-for money away in 
coffins? or do they, on the contrary, hand it back 
into a general around and around? What object 
nature has in practising such deception as this last is 
hard to understand ; not harder, however, than to un- 
derstand why workingmen decide against freedom in 
the country in favor of slavery in the towns. How 
unenviable are all such to a Subjectist ! Yes, Cebes, 
all is paradigm. What, for example, as to Timon rich 
and Timon poor? Timon remains. So, too, remain 
the things called riches and poverty. For Timon to 
grow out of self into the universal is one with grow- 
ing out of the possibility of change as to circum- 
stances. To own nothing is alike with owning every- 
thing. End being never anything else than beginning 
to another end, living gets never away from a circle. 
In the circle is the all. In the night the sun is 
at the antipodes; at mid-day it is overhead. Dark- 
ness and light, moisture and heat, effort and rest, 
are the life of the earth. It is good to lie down, 
and not less good to rise up. Are we to agree 
otherwise than with our brother philosopher of 
Cordova, that "it is the excellency of a great man 
to ask nothing and to want nothing, and to say, I 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 2$$ 

will have nothing to do with fortune that repulses 
Cato and prefers Vatinius" ? The master, if awake, 
might not willingly hear the commendation, but are 
we not to recognize the fortune of Cato greater than 
that of Vatinius, in that he had it in him to remark 
that, when surrounded by the wrecks made in the con- 
tentions of Pompey and Csesar, it was to the discourse 
held in the pen at Athens he could alone turn for con- 
solation? Riches, as Seneca hath it, " is not to increase 
fortune, but to retrench appetite. A bull contents him- 
self with one meadow, and one forest is enough for a 
thousand elephants ; but the little body of a man de- 
vours more than all living creatures. We do not eat 
to satisfy hunger, but ambition ; we are spiritually 
dead while bodily alive, and our houses are so much 
our tombs that a man might write our epitaphs upon 
our very doors." 

Ceb. You imply that to sit with folded hands is to 
make riches equally with the burden-bearers ? 

Prot. Well, let us consider. Material possessions 
are not realities, but appearances. Does any man con- 
tinue to hold material possessions? Are the rugged 
and towering Alp mountains anything but unrealities ? 
Is a stream of lightning other than the extreme op- 
posite of what it is commonly taken to be? Is a 
man's body not everybody else's property quite as 
much as it is his own, and, when viewed physiologi- 



254 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

cally, or from the distance of centuries, does it differ 
much, as to its coming and going, from a flash-light? 
To eat, and to be surfeited with eating, are different 
things. Work, and being exhausted by working, are 
not the same. Prudent care and miserly greed are 
antipodes. Looking out for self, and caring for no- 
body beside self, is difference between wisdom and 
foolishness. Cultivating the material and denying the 
spiritual is one with chaining eyes and nose to the 
ground. How blessed are we to esteem ourselves that, 
like to Pythagoras, we have our lessons in our experi- 
ences ! Recall, Cebes, the words of the master to 
Crito, " If only you can catch me, Crito, bury me as 
you please." The words were not understood in that 
other Now in which they were spoken, but they are 
plain enough to-day. How silly seems the grief of 
that yesterday at Athens in the light of to-day at 
Philadelphia !. How wise, in the light of to-day, 
shows the refusal of the master to burden himself with 
the cares and anxieties of possessions in the yes- 
terday ! 

Ceb. According to this, pity rather than condem- 
nation is to go out to the commuters, the trust- and 
tariff-makers ? 

Prot. If all except themselves were Subjectists, this 
would be a relation held towards them. Unfortu- 
nately, the burdens that such insist on enlarging and 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 255 

bearing get in the way of other people and incommode 
them. So far as ourselves are concerned, we are to 
save being jostled by keeping out of the way. Truly, 
Cebes, you are right, however, — censure is not to be 
unmodified by pity. How the unfortunates are seen 
to stumble and sweat as they run hither and thither 
in and out of their houses intent on purposes which 
are one with a falling down to-day of what was built 
yesterday ! 

Hist, Cebes ! Are we to take credit to ourselves 
in seeing, as we do, that the thing is a puff-ball? or 
is it the case that what we behold is by reason of ab- 
sence of the crowd, and not anything at all on the 
part of nature or of our experiences? How can a 
man look out or up when a surging mass of people 
and the walls and tent-roof of a circus are about and 
over him ? Is it otherwise when the crowds and the 
walls of a street hem one in? Who is he that is brave 
enough to understand clothes when patched breeches 
rub against shiny broadcloth? Is it different as to a 
measuring of flesh-making potatoes, that cost little, 
and palate-tickling fruits, that cost much ? Is it not 
the same as to a beer of sweet-bitter taste made of 
" pumpkins or parsnips or walnut-tree chips" when 
contrasted with the price and prestige of biting tart 
wines grown in the dug-out trenches of the Rhine 
hills? It is not as to what is best, but what is said and 



256 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

thought of things. A subjective sight or sound is one 
with a ghost to him who is wholly an Objectist. A 
single piece of silver held before an eye is capable 
of shutting out visions of opened seals as these were 
seen by John at Patmos. No occultist is any longer 
a money-changer. Approach of material is departure 
of spiritual. Are we to give offence, or take it, in 
reflecting on the arts of the money-changers ? View- 
ing the thing, as we have done, all the way along the 
line from Athens to Philadelphia, in what respect 
have we found this business different from the rearing 
and falling of ant-hills ? — and, indeed, in what respect 
have we found the toilers different from the insects? 
Let us stretch ourselves upon the sward, Cebes, and, 
while having about us the sweet sights and sounds of 
a nature that is every bit our own and that is not 
to be taken from us, let us in sympathy meditate on 
an hallucination that esteems happiness and living 
to lie with the counting of notes, the reckoning of 
pieces of silver, or the making of things not needed ; 
not forgetting, however, that the bankers and brokers 
and candlestick-makers reverse the matter and esteem 
the hallucination as lying with us. 

Ceb. You made a departure from supernatural 
power and from visions, Protagoras. I should like 
much to learn of the true and the false as to these 
things. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 2^7 

Prot. You recall me to good purpose. The wood- 
carver cuts his image from a log. So diamond-cutters 
open windows in stones, disclosing brilliant hidden 
lights. A little science, acting on pieces of black coal, 
annihilates space. Are we prepared to deny reality to 
these things, or that they are hidden until exposed ? 
It is nothing different with the faces seen on the 
rivet-heads by Echecrates, nor with the uplifting ex- 
perienced by Simmias as organ-music lightens him. 
Things are to the senses what the senses are able to 
make out of them ; they are never anything else. 
There is no sparkle of diamond to a blind man, nor 
any uplifting by music of an internally deaf one. 
Supernatural power is one with understanding, it is 
not anywhere else, and this, in turn, is one with 
capability. How a man lives accords with how he 
elects to live. To look continuously at mud is to 
see never the sky. To plaster up eyes and ears is 
to see or hear nothing, as, on the contrary, to open 
them widely, and refine them, is to see and hear pro- 
portionally. 

Ceb. Do you believe, Protagoras, really, and not 
sophistically, that ourselves are ghosts? 

Prot. Whist, Cebes ! Is this not two thousand 

years after? and do we not talk together? Exactly 

what we are, that everybody is who has had a 

funeral. And the same exactly is everybody who has 

r 22* 



258 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

had no funeral. Life and death are wholly one, as 
surely has been made plain. As to-day we know our- 
selves, in like manner shall we know ourselves forever. 
As we seem doing to-day, this it would seem is to go 
on forever, in that sense in which it appears to be of 
accord with the continuous Now that we have known 
and are to continue to know. This is truth ; other- 
wise our argument is not a demonstration, but a lie. 
Beautiful ! glorious ! inexpressibly satisfying ! is the 
prescience of the God. As to change, consider what 
is happily said of this by Antoninus : " Is any man 
afraid of change? What, then, is more pleasing or 
more suitable to the universal nature ? And canst thou 
take a bath unless the wood undergoes a change ? And 
canst thou be nourished unless the food undergoes a 
change? And can anything else that is useful be 
accomplished without change? Dost thou not see, 
then, that for thyself to change is just the same, and 
equally necessary for the universal nature?" To di- 
rect change, Cebes, is, however, another matter from 
that simple mingling and separating of mingled which 
is the destiny of things at large as these consist of 
matter. Here, Cebes, is other aspect of Subjectivism, 
and here is commencement of departure from high 
into higher and from higher to highest: here is from 
God back into God ; here the secret and mystery of 
Nirvana. 



THE ETERNAL NOW. 259 

[As continuation of the present work and as free opening of 
the Subjective, as this relates with the inquiries made by Cebes 
in his last few questions, follows the book " Nineteenth Cen- 
tury Sense." The volumes relate as lines between lines. 
Reading is to commence with the ninth chapter, the subject of 
which is " The character of mediums and sensitives and means 
of intercourse with the higher planes of the world." The book 
being read from this ninth chapter to its end, the illusions and 
disillusions treated of in the beginning of the work will be 
properly understood and measured. In this book the hypostases 
will be found discussed with much fulness.] 




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